GIFT   OF 
Elisabeth  Whitney  Putndht 


IL— ■ 


?s 


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The  Empire  of  Love 


BY     W.    J.    DAWSON 


The   Empire   of    Love. 

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FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 

Publishers 


The  Empire  of  Love 


By 
W.  J.  DAWSON 


New    York        Chicago        Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revel  I  Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


\    3     3  ' ■ j  j  a ,  '  *  i  j    »  ■ 

;.\1    \i*i  U>h\z  :  ,7, 


'  >  '>  >  y  >  »  .  ■  , 


Copyright,  1907,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


3^ 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  80  Wabash  Avenue 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


1  *  1 


« *    *  ««  *  «    * 

c       *  *    t        •       «  « 

•    C  «        «  C    1     «  I  * 


.*••.:  ;*:«••:•.-  "::..:••••*■ 


\ 


To 
M.   M.   D.y 

who,  during  the  last  two  years 

of  our  residence  in  London , 

practiced  the  teachings  of  this  book 

before  I  taught  them  : 

proving  daily 

in  her  compassionate  toil  for  others 

the  divine  efficacy  of  simple  love 

to  redeem  the  lives 

thai  were  most  estranged  from  virtue, 

and  most  lost  to  hope. 


412450 


Love  feels  no  burden,  regards  not  labours,  would 
willingly  do  more  than  it  is  able,  pleads  not  impossi- 
bility, because  it  feels  that  it  can  and  may  do  all 
things. 

Thomas  a  Kempis. 


CONTENTS 


I. 

The  Genius  to  be  Loved 

9 

II. 

What  is  Christianity  ? 

21 

III. 

The  Justice  of  Jesus 

33 

IV. 

Love  is  Justice 

45 

V. 

Love  and  Forgiveness  . 

55 

VI. 

The  Practice  of  Love  . 

65 

VII. 

Love  and  Judgment 

73 

VIII. 

The  Wisdom  of  the  Simple  . 

83 

IX. 

The  Revelations  of  Grief    . 

97 

X. 

A  Confession         . 

109 

XL 

A  Lover  of  Men  . 

121 

XII, 

The  Law  of  Compassion 

133 

XIII. 

The  Empire  of  Love     . 

147 

XIV. 

The  Builders  of  the  Empire 

167 

THE  GENIUS  TO  BE  LOVED 


»  »      •      •   *        1,  > ,  > 


WWF  77Z£y  LOVED  HIM 

So  kindly  was  His  love  to  us, 

( W<?  /*<2</  not  heard  of  love  before), 

That  all  our  life  grew  glorious 
When  He  had  halted  at  our  door. 

So  meekly  did  He  love  us  men, 

Though  blind  we  were  with  shameful  sin, 
He  touched  our  eyes  with  tears,  and  then 

Led  God's  tall  angels  flaming  in. 

He  dwelt  with  us  a  little  space. 
As  mothers  do  in  childhoods  years. 

And  still  we  can  discern  His  face 
Wherever  Joy  or  Love  appears. 

He  made  our  virtues  all  His  own, 

And  lent  them  grace  we  could  not  give, 

And  now  our  world  seems  His  alone, 
And  while  we  live  He  seems  to  live. 

He  took  our  sorrows  and  our  pain, 
And  hid  their  torture  in  His  breast, 

Till  we  received  them  back  again 
To  find  on  each  His  grief  impressed. 


•    '    r       « 

»  *  ,r '  t 

r     «        •    * 


r  i   i    '  c 

'      r    «     f  C       ' 

c    «    t-t    * 


He  clasped  our  children  in  His  arms. 
And  showed  us  where  their  beauty  shone. 

He  took  from  us  our  gray  alarms, 
And  put  Death's  icy  armour  on. 

So  gentle  were  His  ways  with  us, 

That  crippled  souls  had  ceased  to  sighf 

On  them  He  laid  His  hands,  and  thus 
They  gloried  at  His  passing  by. 

Without  reproof  or  word  of  blame, 
As  mothers  do  in  childhood 's  years, 

He  kissed  our  lips  in  spite  of  shame, 
And  stayed  the  passage  of  our  tears. 

So  tender  was  His  love  to  us, 

( We  had  not  learned  to  love  before), 

That  we  grew  like  to  Him,  and  thus 
Men  sought  His  grace  in  us  once  more. 

Coningsby  William  Dawson. 


■>•)■>■>    ■>   1 


I 

THE   GENIUS  TO  BE  LOVED 

IN  the  history  of  the  last  two  thousand 
years  there  is  but  one  Person  who  has 
been,  and  is  supremely  loved.  Many 
have  been  loved  by  individuals,  by  groups  of 
persons,  or  by  communities ;  some  have  re- 
ceived the  pliant  idolatries  of  nations,  such 
as  heroes  and  national  deliverers ;  but  in 
every  instance  the  sense  of  love  thus  excited 
has  been  intimately  associated  with  some 
triumph  of  intellect,  or  some  resounding 
achievement  in  the  world  of  action.  In  this 
there  is  nothing  unusual,  for  man  is  a  natural 
worshipper  of  heroes.  But  in  Jesus  Christ 
we  discover  something  very  different ;  He 
possessed  the  genius  to  be  loved  in  so  trans- 
cendent a  degree  that  it  appears  His  sole 
genius. 

Jesus  is  loved  not  for  anything  that  He 
taught,  nor  yet  wholly  for  anything  that  He 

13 


.  u THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

HUH  ..:.£...; 

did,  although  His  actions  culminate  in  the 
divine  fascination  of  the  Cross,  but  rather 
for  what  He  was  in  Himself.  His  very  name 
provokes  in  countless  millions  a  reverent 
tenderness  of  emotion  usually  associated 
only  with  the  most  sacred  and  intimate  of 
human  relationships.  He  is  loved  with  a 
certain  purity  and  intensity  of  passion  that 
transcends  even  the  most  intimate  expres- 
sions of  human  emotion.  The  curious  thing 
is  that  He  Himself  anticipated  this  kind  of 
love  as  His  eternal  heritage  with  men.  He 
expected  that  men  would  love  Him  more  than 
father  or  mother,  wife  or  child,  and  even 
made  such  a  love  a  condition  of  what  He 
called  discipleship.  The  greatest  marvel  of 
all  human  history  is  that  this  prognostication 
has  been  strictly  verified  in  the  event.  He 
is  the  Supreme  Lover,  for  whose  love,  un- 
realizable as  it  is  by  touch,  or  glance,  or 
spoken  word,  or  momentary  presence,  men 
and  women  are  still  willing  to  sacrifice  them- 
selves, and  surrender  all  things.  The  preg- 
nant words  of  Napoleon,  uttered  in  his  last 


THE  GENIUS  TO  BE  LOVED      15 

lonely  reveries  in  St.  Helena,  still  express  the 
strangest  thing  in  universal  history :  "  Caesar, 
Charlemagne,  I,  have  founded  empires. 
They  were  founded  on  force,  and  have  per- 
ished. Jesus  Christ  has  founded  an  empire 
on  love,  and  to  this  day  there  are  millions 
ready  to   die  for  Him." 

Napoleon  felt  the  wonder  of  it  all,  the 
baffling,  inexplicable  marvel.  Were  we  able 
to  detach  ourselves  enough  from  use  and 
custom,  to  survey  the  movement  of  human 
thought  from  some  lonely  height  above  the 
floods  of  Time,  as  Napoleon  in  the  high  sea- 
silences  of  St.  Helena,  we  also  might  feel  the 
wonder  of  this  most  wonderful  thing  the  world 
has  ever  known. 

That  the  majority  of  men,  and  even  Chris- 
tian men,  do  not  perceive  that  the  whole 
meaning  of  the  life  of  Christ  is  Love  is  a 
thing  too  obvious  to  demand  evidence  or  in- 
vite contradiction.  I  say  men,  and  Christian 
men,  thus  limiting  my  statement,  because 
women  and  Christian  women,  frequently  do 
perceive  it,  being  themselves  the  creatures  of 


16  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

affection,  and  finding  in  affection  the  one 
.ufficing  symbol  of  life  and  of  the  universe. 
It  is  a  St.  Catherine  who  thinks  of  herself  as 
the  bride  of  Christ,  and  dreams  the  lovely 
vision  of  the  changed  hearts — the  heart  of 
Jesus  placed  by  the  hands  that  bled  beneath 
her  pure  bosom,  and  her  heart  hidden  in  the 
side  of  Him  who  died  for  her.  It  is  a  St. 
Theresa  who  melts  into  ecstasy  at  the  brood- 
ing presence  of  the  heavenly  Lover,  and  can 
only  think  of  the  Evil  One  himself  with  com- 
miseration as  one  who  cannot  love.  It  is 
true  that  Francis  of  Assisi  also  thought  and 
spoke  of  Christ  with  a  lover's  ecstasy,  but  then 
Francis  in  his  exquisite  tenderness  of  nature, 
was  more  woman  than  man.  No  such 
thought  visited  the  stern  heart  of  Dominic, 
nor  any  of  those  makers  of  theology  who 
have  built  systems  and  disciplines  upon  the 
divine  poetry  of  the  divine  Life. 

Love,  as  the  perfect  symbol  of  life  and  the 
universe,  does  not  content  men,  simply  be- 
cause for  most  men  love  is  not  the  key  to  life, 
nor  an  end  worth  living  for  in  itself,  nor  any- 


THE  GENIUS  TO  BE  LOVED      17 

thing  but  a  complex  and  often  troublesome 
emotion,  which  must  needs  be  subordinated 
to  other  faculties  and  qualities,  such  as  greed, 
or  pride,  or  the  desire  of  power,  or  the  domi- 
nant demands  of  intellect.  Among  men  the 
poets  alone  have  really  understood  Jesus : 
and  in  the  category  of  the  poets  must  be  in- 
cluded the  saints,  whose  religion  has  always 
been  interpreted  to  them  through  the  im- 
agination. The  poets  have  understood  ;  the 
theologians  rarely  or  never.  Thus  it  happens 
that  men,  being  the  general  and  accepted  in- 
terpreters of  Christ,  have  all  but  wholly  misin- 
terpreted Him.  The  lyric  passion  of  that  life, 
and  the  lyric  love  which  it  excites,  has  been 
to  them  a  disregarded  music.  They  have 
rarely  achieved  more  than  to  tell  us  what 
Christ  taught ;  they  have  wholly  failed  to 
make  us  feel  what  Christ  was.  But  Mary 
Magdalene  knew  this,  and  it  was  what  she  said 
and  felt  in  the  Garden  that  has  put  Christ 
upon  the  throne  of  the  world.  Was  not  her 
vision  after  all  the  true  one  ?  Is  not  a 
Catherine  a  better   guide   to  Jesus   than  a 


18  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

Dominic  ?  When  all  the  strident  theologies 
fall  silent,  will  not  the  world's  whole  worship 
still  utter  itself  in  the  lyric  cry, 

Jesu,  Lover  of  my  soul, 
Let  me  to  Thy  bosom  fly. 

Is  it  then  not  within  the  competence  of  man 
to  interpret  Christ  aright,  simply  because  the 
masculine  temperament  is  what  it  is  ?  By 
no  means,  for  such  a  statement  would  dis- 
qualify the  evangelists  themselves,  who  are 
the  only  biographers  of  Jesus.  But  in  the 
degree  that  a  temperament  is  only  masculine, 
it  will  fail  to  understand  Jesus.  Napoleon 
could  not  understand ;  he  was  the  child  of 
force,  the  son  of  the  sword,  the  very  type  of 
that  hard  efficiency  of  will  and  intellect 
which  turns  the  heart  to  flint,  and  scorns  the 
witness  of  the  softer  intuitions.  Francis 
could  understand  because  he  was  in  part  femi- 
nine— not  weakly  so,  but  nobly,  as  all  poets 
and  dreamers  and  visionaries  are.  Paul 
could  understand  for  the  same  reason,  and  so 
could  John  and  Peter ;  each,  in  varying  de- 


THE  GENIUS  TO  BE  LOVED      19 

grees,  belonging  to  the  same  type  ;  but  Pilate 
could  not  understand,  because  he  had  been 
trained  in  the  hard  efficiency  of  Rome ;  nor 
Judas,  because  the  masculine  vice  of  ambi- 
tion had  overgrown  his  affections,  and  de- 
flowered his  heart.  What  is  it  then  in  Paul 
and  John  and  Peter,  what  element  or  quality, 
which  we  do  not  find  in  Pilate,  Judas,  or 
Napoleon  ?  Clearly  there  is  no  lack  of  force, 
for  the  personality  of  these  three  first  apostles 
lifted  a  world  out  of  its  groove  and  changed 
the  course  of  history.  Was  it  not  just  this, 
that  each  had  beneath  his  masculine  strength 
a  feminine  tenderness,  a  power  of  loving  and 
of  begetting  love  in  others  ?  John  lying  on 
the  bosom  of  Jesus  in  sheer  abandonment  of 
love  and  sorrow  at  the  last  Supper ;  Peter, 
plunging  naked  into  the  Galilean  sea,  and 
struggling  to  the  shore  at  the  mere  suspicion 
that  the  strange  figure  outlined  there  upon 
the  morning  mist  is  the  Lord ;  Paul  praying 
not  only  to  share  the  wounds  of  Jesus,  but  if 
there  be  any  pang  left  over,  any  anguish  un- 
fulfilled, that  this  anguish  may  be  his — these 


20  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

are  not  alone  immortal  pictures,  but  they  are 
revelations  of  a  temperament,  the  tempera- 
ment that  understands  Jesus.  He  who  could 
not  melt  into  an  abandonment  of  grief  and 
love  over  one  on  whom  the  shadow  of  the  last 
hour  rested  ;  he  who  would  spring  headlong 
into  no  estranging  sea  to  reach  one  loved 
and  lost  and  marvellously  brought  near 
again ;  he  who  can  share  the  festal  wine  of 
life,  but  has  no  appetite  for  agony,  no  thirst- 
ing of  the  soul  to  bear  another's  pain — these 
can  never  understand  Jesus.  They  cannot 
understand  Him,  simply  because  they  cannot 
understand  love. 


WHAT  IS  CHRISTIANirr? 


TOWARDS  GALILEE 

The  great  obdurate  world  I  know  no  more, 
The  clanging  of  the  brazen  wheels  of  greed, 
The  taloned  hands  that  build  the  miser's  store, 
The  stony  streets  where  feeble  feet  must  bleed. 
No  more  I  walk  beneath  thy  ashen  skies, 
With  pallid  martyrs  cruelly  crucified 
Upon  thy  predetermined  Calvaries : 
I,  too,  have  suffered,  yea,  and  I  have  died! 
Now,  at  the  last,  another  road  I  take 
Thro'  peaceful  gardens,  by  a  lilied  way, 
To  those  low  eaves  beside  the  silver  lake, 
Where  Christ  waits  for  me  at  the  close  of  day. 
Farewell,  proud  world  !     In  vain  thou  callest  me* 
I  go  to  meet  my  Lord  in  Galilee. 


II 

WHAT  IS  CHRISTIANITY? 

CHRISTIANITY,  as  it  exists  to-day,  is 
in  the  main  a  misrepresentation  and  a 
misinterpretation  of  Christ ;  not  con- 
sciously indeed — if  it  were  so  the  remedy 
would  be  easy;  but  unconsciously,  which 
makes  the  remedy  difficult.  One  need  not 
stop  to  define  Christianity,  for  there  is  only 
one  sincere  meaning  to  the  word  ;  it  implies  a 
kind  of  life  whose  spirit  and  method  reproduce 
as  accurately  as  possible  the  spirit  and  the 
method  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  It  would  seem 
that  if  this  interpretation  of  the  term  be  cor- 
rect there  could  be  no  difficulty  in  adjust- 
ing even  unconscious  misinterpretation  of 
Christ  to  the  true  facts  of  the  case  :  but  here 
we  are  met  by  that  perversity  of  vision  which 
springs  not  from  ignorance,  but  from  thought- 
lessness, and  is  in  its  nature  much  more  ob- 

23 


24  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

durate  than  the  worst  perversity  of  ignorance. 
Ignorance  can  be  enlightened;  thoughtless- 
ness, being  usually  associated  with  vanity,  rec- 
ognizes no  need  of  enlightenment. 

The  life  of  Jesus,  freshly  introduced  to  a 
mind  wholly  ignorant  of  its  existence  may  be 
trusted  to  convey  its  own  impression  ;  but  the 
thoughtless  mind  will  be  either  too  proud,  or 
too  shallow,  or  too  confident,  to  be  sensitive 
to  right  impressions.  Thus  the  trouble  with 
most  people  who  call  themselves  Christians 
is  not  to  educate  them  into  right  concep- 
tions of  the  life  of  Christ,  but  to  destroy  the 
growth  of  wrong  impressions.  "Surely," 
they  will  say,  "  we  know  all  about  the  life  of 
Christ.  We  have  read  the  biographies  of 
J  esus  ever  since  the  days  of  infancy.  We  have 
heard  the  life  of  Jesus  expounded  through 
long  years  by  multitudes  of  teachers.  We 
have  a  church  which  claims  to  have  extracted 
from  the  life  of  Jesus  a  whole  code  of  laws  for 
life  and  conduct ;  is  not  this  enough  ?  "  But 
what  if  the  teachers  themselves  have  never 
found    the    true   secret  of  Jesus?      What  if 


WHAT  IS  CHRISTIANITY?        25 

they  have  but  repeated  the  error  of  the 
Pharisees  in  elaborating  a  code  of  laws  in 
which  the  vital  spirit  of  the  truth  they  would 
impart  is  lost  ?  And  does  not  the  whole  his- 
tory of  man's  mind  teach  us  that  one  simple 
truth  known  at  first-hand  is  worth  more  to 
us,  and  is  of  greater  influence  on  our  con- 
duct, than  all  the  second-hand  instruction  we 
may  receive  from  the  most  competent  of 
teachers  ?  It  is  just  this  first-hand  thought 
which  we  most  need.  We  need  to  see  for 
ourselves  what  Jesus  was,  and  not  through 
the  eyes  of  another,  whatever  his  authority. 

Suppose  that  we  should  read  the  Gospels 
in  this  spirit,  with  an  entirely  unbiassed  and 
receptive  mind,  capable  of  first-hand  im- 
pressions, what  would  be  the  probable  char- 
acter of  these  impressions?  The  clearest 
and  deepest  of  all,  I  think,  would  be  that  the 
Jesus  therein  depicted  lived  His  life  on 
principles  so  novel  that  we  are  able  to  dis- 
cover no  life  entirely  like  His  in  the  best 
lives  round  about  us.  We  should  probably 
be  struck  first  of  all  by  certain  outward  dis- 


26  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

similarities.  Thus  He  was  not  only  poor, 
but  He  did  not  resent  poverty — He  beatified 
it.  The  things  for  which  men  naturally,  and, 
as  we  think,  laudably  strive,  such  as  a  settled 
position  in  society  and  the  consideration  of 
others,  He  did  not  think  worth  seeking  at  all. 
He  made  no  use  of  His  abilities  for  private 
ends,  which  has  been  the  common  principle 
of  social  life  since  society  began.  He  asked 
nothing  of  the  world,  being  apparently  con- 
vinced that  nothing  which  the  world  could 
give  Him  was  worth  having.  Strangest 
thing  of  all  in  one  who  must  have  been  con- 
scious of  His  own  genius,  and  of  the  value 
of  His  teachings  to  mankind,  He  made  not 
the  least  effort  to  perpetuate  these  teachings. 
He  wrote  no  book,  provided  no  biographer, 
did  none  of  those  things  which  the  humblest 
man  of  genius  does  to  ensure  that  distant 
generations  shall  comprehend  and  appreciate 
his  character  and  message.  He  was  content 
to  speak  His  deepest  truths  to  casual  listen- 
ers.  He  spent  all  His  wealth  of  intellect 
upon  inferior  persons,  fishermen  and  the  like, 


WHAT  IS  CHRISTIANITY?        27 

who  did  not  comprehend  one  tithe  of  what 
He  said.  He  was  the  friend  of  all  who  chose 
to  seek  His  friendship.  He  discriminated 
so  little  that  He  even  admitted  a  Judas  to 
His  intimacy,  and  allowed  women  tainted 
with  dishonour  and  impurity  to  offer  Him 
public  tokens  of  affection.  In  all  these  things 
He  differed  absolutely  from  any  other  man 
who  ever  lived  beneath  the  public  eye.  In 
all  these  things  He  still  stands  alone;  for 
who,  among  the  saintliest  men  we  know,  has 
not  some  innocent  pride  in  his  ability,  or 
some  preference  in  friendship,  or  some  in- 
stinctive compliance  with  social  usage,  or 
some  worldly  hopes  and  honourable  aims 
which  he  shares  in  common  with  the  mass 
of  men  ? 

But  these  outward  dissimilarities  of  con- 
duct disclose  a  dissimilarity  of  soul.  Men 
live  for  something ;  for  what  did  Jesus  live  ? 
And  the  answer  that  leaps  upon  us  like  a 
great  light  from  every  page  of  the  Gospels  is 
plain  ;  He  lived  for  love.  If  He  did  not  care 
for  praise  or  honour ;  if  He  regarded  even 


28  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

the  preservation  of  His  teachings  with  a 
divine  carelessness,  it  was  because  He  had  a 
nobler  end  in  view,  the  love  of  men.  He 
could  not  live  without  love,  and  His  supreme 
aim  was  to  make  Himself  loved.  And  yet  it 
was  less  a  conscious  aim,  than  the  natural 
working  out  of  His  own  character.  Fisher- 
men by  the  sea  saw  Him  but  once ;  instantly 
they  left  their  boats  and  followed  Him.  A 
man  sitting  at  the  receipt  of  custom,  a  hard 
man  we  should  suppose,  little  likely  to  be 
swayed  by  sudden  emotions,  also  sees  Him 
once,  and  finds  his  occupation  gone.  A 
beautiful  courtesan,  beholding  Him  pass  by, 
breaks  from  her  lovers,  and  follows  Him  into 
an  alien  house,  where  she  bathes  His  feet 
with  tears  and  wipes  them  with  the  hairs  of 
her  head.  Mature  women  without  a  word 
spoken  or  a  plea  made,  minister  to  Him  of 
their  substance,  and  count  their  lives  His. 
When  He  sleeps  wearied  out  upon  a  rude 
fishing-boat,  there  is  a  pillow  for  His  head, 
placed  there  by  some  unknown  adorer.  The 
men  He  makes  apostles,  all  but  one,  count 


WHAT  IS  CHRISTIANITY?        29 

His  smile  over-payment  for  the  loss  of  home, 
of  wife,  of  children.  Countless  throngs  of 
ordinary  men  and  women  forget  their 
hunger,  and  are  content  to  camp  in  desert 
places  only  to  listen  to  the  music  of  His 
voice.  Wild  and  outlawed  men,  criminals 
and  lepers  and  madmen,  become  as  little 
children  at  His  word,  and  all  the  wrongs  and 
bruises  inflicted  on  them  by  a  cruel  world  are 
healed  beneath  His  kindly  glance.  Does  it 
matter  greatly  what  He  taught?  This  is 
how  He  lived.  He  lived  in  such  a  way  that 
men  saw  that  love  was  the  only  thing  worth 
living  for,  that  life  had  meaning  only  as  it 
had  love.  And  this  is  the  imperishable 
tradition  of  Jesus : 

This  is  His  divinity, 
This  His  universal  plea, 
Here  is  One  that  loveth  thee. 

What  then  is  a  true  Christianity  but  the 
accurate  reproduction  of  this  spirit  of  love, 
the  creation  of  loving  and  lovable  men  and 
women,  who   attract  and  uplift  all  around 


30  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

them  by  the  subtle  fascination  of  the  love 
that  animates  them?  What  is  a  Christian 
Church  but  a  confraternity  of  such  men  and 
women  ?  What  is  a  Christian  society,  but  a 
society  permeated  by  this  spirit,  and  bringing 
all  the  affairs  of  life  to  its  test  ?  And  what 
place  have  social  superiorities  and  inferior- 
ities ;  pride,  scorn,  or  coldness ;  harsh 
theologies,  breeding  harsh  tempers  and 
infinite  disputes;  the  egoism  that  wounds 
the  humble,  the  strength  that  disregards  the 
weak,  the  vanity  that  hurts  the  simple,  in 
any  company  of  men  and  women  who  dare 
to  wear  the  name  of  such  a  Founder?  It 
was  as  a  Bridegroom  Christ  came,  anointed 
with  all  the  perfumes  of  a  dedicated  love, 
and  until  the  last  bitter  hour  of  His  rejection, 
He  moved  with  such  lyric  joyousness  across 
the  earth,  that  life  became  festive  in  His 
presence.  It  is  as  a  Bride  the  church  ex- 
ists on  earth,  and  if  no  festive  smiles  are 
awakened  by  its  presence,  and  no  gracious 
unsealing  of  the  founts  of  love  in  human 
hearts,  then  is  it  not  Christ's  Church,  for  He 


WHAT  IS  CHRISTIANITY?        31 

has  passed  elsewhere  with  another  company 
to  the  marriage-feast,  and  His  Church  stands 
without,  before  a  barred  and  darkened 
door. 


THE  JUSTICE  OF  JESUS 


HOW  HE  CAME 

When  the  golden  evening  gathered  on  the  shore  of 

Galilee, 
When  the  fishing  boats  lay  quiet  by  the  sea, 
Long  ago  the  people  wondered,  thtf  no  sign  was  in  the 

sky, 
For  the  glory  of  the  Lord  was  passing  by. 

Not  in  robes  of  purple  splendour,  not  in  silken  softness 

shod, 
But  in  raiment  worn  with  travel  came  their  God, 
And  the  people  knew  His  presence  by  the  heart  that 

ceased  to  sigh 
When  the  glory  of  the  Lord  was  passing  by. 

For  He  healed  their  sick  at  even,  and  He  cured  the 

leper's  sore, 
And  sinful  men  and  women  sinned  no  more, 
And  thi  world  grew  mirthful  hearted,  and  forgot  its 

misery 
When  the  glory  of  the  Lord  was  passing  by. 

Not  in  robes  of  purple  splendour,  but  in  lives  that  do 

His  will, 
In  patient  acts  of  kindness  He  comes  still; 
And  the  people  cry  with  wonder,  tho9  no  sign  is  in  the 

sky, 
That  the  glory  of  the  Lord  is  passing  by. 


Ill 

THE  JUSTICE  OF  JESUS 

ONE  strong  peculiarity  of  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus — we  might  even  call  it 
its  outstanding  feature — is  that  it  is 
frequently  disclosed  in  a  series  of  incidents. 
Unlike  most  teachers  He  philosophizes  little 
about  life.  A  single  chapter  of  the  Gospels, 
or  at  most  two,  would  contain  all  the  maxims 
about  life  which  He  thought  necessary  for 
wise  and  lofty  conduct.  His  method  is 
rather  to  put  Himself  in  relation  to  the 
crucial  occurrences  of  life,  and  to  reveal  the 
true  way  of  regarding  them  by  His  own 
attitude  towards  them.  When  He  would 
teach  the  beauty  of  humility  it  is  by  putting 
a  little  child  in  the  midst  of  His  arrogant 
and  vainglorious  disciples,  that  the  child 
may  become  the  living  and  memorable 
parable  of  His  sentiments.  When  He  would 
35 


36  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

teach  humanity,  He  does  so  by  His  own  con- 
duct to  lepers.  When  He  would  discredit 
and  expose  the  barbarism  of  the  Mosaic 
Sabbatarian  laws  as  interpreted  by  scribes 
and  Pharisees,  He  does  so  by  healing  the 
sick  and  blind  upon  the  Sabbath  day.  He 
is  all  for  the  concrete,  teaching  not  by  theory, 
but  by  example.  The  method  is  novel,  and 
its  advantages  are  obvious.  The  best  con- 
ceived discourses  on  humility,  mercy,  or 
sympathy,  might  be  forgotten,  but  no  one 
can  forget  the  child  among  the  disciples,  nor 
the  raptured  gaze  of  the  blind  man  when  his 
purged  eyes  open  to  behold  the  face  of  his 
miraculous  Physician,  nor  the  picture  of  Jesus 
touching  without  fear  or  disgust  the  leper 
whose  unclean  contagion  made  him  an  object 
of  aversion  even  to  the  pitiful. 

It  is  a  wonderful  method  of  instruction ;  it 
makes  every  other  method  seem  trite  and 
wearisome.  Its  effect  is  to  make  the  Gospels 
a  series  of  tableaux,  which  dwell  in  the 
memory  as  things  actually  seen.  The  groups 
upon   the  stage  perpetually  shift   and    re- 


THE  JUSTICE  OF  JESUS  37 

arrange  themselves;  each  represents  some 
phase  of  life,  some  problem,  some  combina- 
tion of  circumstance  more  or  less  common 
in  the  experience  of  men,  something  that  is 
typical,  for  Jesus  chooses  only  the  typical  and 
essential  things  of  life  for  these  occasions. 
The  lesser  things  of  life  He  passes  over ;  it 
is  the  great  and  crucial  matters  which  attract 
Him. 

But  what  are  the  great  things  of  life? 
They  all  fall  into  one  category,  they  all 
present  problems  in  human  relationship.  No 
problems  are  so  difficult.  They  are  not 
speculative,  but  practical.  A  man  who  may 
be  wise  as  the  world  counts  wisdom,  and  able 
to  pierce  with  acute  analysis  to  the  depth  of 
the  abstrusest  philosophic  problem,  may 
nevertheless  find  himself  hopelessly  baffled 
by  some  quite  common  fact  of  life,  such  as 
how  to  treat  a  wayward  son,  or  a  sinful 
woman.  I  am  not  likely  to  lose  a  night's 
rest  because  I  am  unable  to  define  the  Trinity 
but  with  what  sore  travail  of  heart  do  I  toss 
through   midnight  hours   when   I   have    to 


38  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

settle  some  course  of  action  towards  the 
friend  who  has  betrayed  me,  the  brother  who 
has  brought  me  shame,  the  child  who  scoffs 
at  my  restraint,  and  hears  the  call  of  the  far 
country  in  every  swift  pulsation  of  his  pas- 
sionate heart !  And  why  cannot  I  settle  my 
course  of  action  ?  Because  my  mind  is  con- 
fused by  something  which  I  call  justice,  to 
which  custom  has  given  authority  and  con- 
secration. Justice  prescribes  one  course  of 
action,  affection  another.  The  convention  of 
the  world  insists  that  wrong-doing  should  be 
punished,  which  is  manifestly  right ;  but 
when  it  insists  that  I  should  be  the  punisher, 
I  suspect  something  wrong.  The  more 
closely  I  study  conventional  justice  the  more 
I  am  conscious  of  something  in  myself  that 
distrusts  and  revolts  from  it.  The  more  I 
incline  to  the  voice  of  affection  the  more  I 
fear  it,  lest  I  should  be  guilty  of  weakness 
which  would  merit  my  own  contempt.  The 
struggle  is  one  between  convention  and  in- 
stinct, and  I  know  not  which  side  to  take. 
But  one  thing  I  do  know ;  it  is  that  I  have 


THE  JUSTICE  OF  JESUS  39 

no  certain  clue  to  guide  me,  no  clear  de- 
termining principle  that  divides  the  darkness 
with  a  sword  of  light,  no  voice  within  myself 
that  is  authoritative. 

Now  the  wonderful  thing  in  Jesus  is  that 
He  is  always  sure  of  Himself.  Nothing  takes 
Him  by  surprise,  nothing  produces  the  least 
hesitation  in  His  judgment.  Therefore  He 
must  have  had  an  unfailing  clue  to  which  He 
trusted  in  the  maze  of  life.  Behind  all  con- 
sistency of  judgment  there  must  exist  con- 
sistency of  principle.  The  principle  that 
governed  all  the  thoughts  of  Jesus  was  that 
love  was  the  only  real  justice.  He  came  not 
to  condemn,  not  to  destroy  men's  lives,  but 
to  save  them.  There  was  no  problem  of 
human  relationship  that  could  not  be  solved 
by  love  ;  there  was  no  other  principle  needed 
for  the  regulation  of  society ;  and  no  other 
could  produce  that  general  peace  and  good- 
will which  He  called  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

Thus,  on  one  occasion  Jesus  tells  a  story 
which  is  so  lifelike  in  every  touch  that  we 
may  accept  it,  without  doubt,  as  less  a  par- 


40  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

able  than  an  incident.  A  father  has  two 
sons,  one  of  whom  is  industrious  and  dutiful, 
the  other  wayward  and  rebellious.  The  way- 
ward son  finally  casts  off  all  pretense  of  filial 
obedience,  goes  into  a  far  country,  and 
wastes  his  substance  in  riotous  living.  Here 
we  have  one  of  the  saddest  of  all  problems 
in  human  relationship,  for  presently  the  dis- 
graced son  comes  home  a  beggar.  The 
elder  brother  who  represents  the  average 
social  view,  has  no  doubt  whatever  as  to 
what  should  be  done.  He  is  offended  that 
the  disgraced  son  should  come  home  at  all ; 
he  would  have  thought  better  of  him  if  he 
had  hidden  his  shame  in  the  country  that 
had  witnessed  it.  Probably  his  sense  of 
pride  and  respectability  is  offended  more 
than  his  love  of  virtue,  though  he  character- 
istically gives  his  jealous  anger  the  illusion 
of  morality.  This,  I  say,  is  the  average 
social  view.  There  are  few  things  more 
cruel  than  affronted  respectability.  The 
elder  brother  is  an  eminently  respectable 
person,  totally  unacquainted  with  wayward 


THE  JUSTICE  OF  JESUS  41 

passions,  and  his  only  feeling  for  his  brother 
is  disdain. 

Jesus  tells  the  story,  however,  in  such  a 
way  as  to  discredit  the  average  social  view. 
He  begins  by  making  us  feel  that  whatever 
follies  the  prodigal  had  committed,  he  had 
already  been  punished  for  them  in  the 
miseries  he  had  endured.  It  is  not  for  man 
to  punish  with  his  whip  of  scorn  one  who  has 
already  been  flaggellated  with  a  whip  of 
scorpions  in  the  desert  places  of  disgrace  and 
shame.  Jesus  makes  us  feel  also  that  what- 
ever sins  might  be  laid  to  the  charge  of  the 
disgraced  son,  there  is  nevertheless  in  his 
heart  a  warmth  of  feeling  of  which  the  elder 
brother  gives  no  sign.  The  boy  loves  his 
father,  otherwise  he  would  not  have  turned 
to  him  in  his  anguish  of  distress.  The  elder 
brother's  attitude  to  his  father  is  arrogant  and 
harsh ;  the  younger  brother's  is  humble  and 
tender.  Lastly  the  father  himself  is  revealed 
as  the  embodiment  of  love.  He  asks  no 
questions,  utters  no  reproaches,  imposes  no 
conditions  ;  he  simply  takes  his  son  back,  in 


42  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

the  rush  of  his  affection  cutting  short  the 
boy's  pitiful  confession,  and  calling  for  shoes 
and  new  robes  and  festal  music,  as  though 
his  son  had  returned  in  dignity  and  triumph. 
In  the  last  scene  of  all,  implied  rather  than 
described,  the  restored  prodigal  sits  at  the 
feast,  leaning  on  his  father's  bosom,  but  the 
respectable  son  stands  without  in  a  darkness 
of  his  own  creation — the  darkness  which  a 
harsh  spirit  and  an  unlovely  temper  never 
fail  to  create  in  men  of  his  unhappy  tempera- 
ment 

It  is  a  very  strange  story,  if  we  come  to 
think  of  it ;  almost  an  immoral  story,  as  no 
doubt  it  was  considered  by  the  Pharisees,  and 
persons  of  their  cold  and  mechanical  type  of 
virtue.  But  Jesus  anticipates  their  criticism 
with  one  of  the  most  startling  statements  that 
ever  fell  from  inspired  lips,  "  There  is  more 
joy  in  heaven  among  the  angels  of  God  over 
one  sinner  that  repenteth  than  over  ninety  and 
nine  righteous  persons  who  need  no  repent- 
ance." Heaven  approves  the  story,  if  they 
do  not.     Thus  God  Himself  would  act,  for 


THE  JUSTICE  OF  JESUS  43 

God  is  love.  Thus  love  must  needs  act,  if  it 
be  the  kind  of  love  that  "  suflereth  long  and 
is  kind,  doth  not  behave  itself  unseemly, 
seeketh  not  its  own,  is  not  provoked,  taketh 
not  account  of  evil,  beareth  all  things,  be- 
lieveth  all  things,  hopeth  all  things,  endureth 
all  things."  And  if  we  ask  what  becomes  of 
justice,  Jesus  assures  us  that  love  is  the  only- 
real  justice.  For  the  main  object  of  justice 
is  not  punishment  but  reclamation.  A  truly 
enlightened  justice  is  less  concerned  with  the 
punishment  of  wrong  than  its  reparation. 
The  gravest  question  in  the  case  of  this  un- 
happy boy  is  not  what  he  has  made  of  him- 
self by  sin  and  folly,  but  what  can  yet  be 
made  of  him  by  wise  and  tender  treatment. 
Had  the  father  coldly  dismissed  the  prodigal 
with  some  bitter  verdict  on  his  past  folly,  he 
himself  would  have  been  unjust  to  the  boy's 
possibilities,  and  thus  would  have  sinned 
against  his  son  with  a  sin  much  less  capable 
of  excuse  than  the  son's  sin  against  him. 
The  worst  sinner  in  the  story  is  not  the  son 
who  went  wrong,  but  the  son  who  had  never 


44  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

done  anything  but  right,  yet  had  done  it  in 
such  a  way  that  it  had  begotten  in  him  a 
vile,  censorious,  loveless  temper.  No  one  can 
be  just  who  does  not  love ;  and  so,  once 
more  removing  the  story  into  that  unseen 
world  which  Christ  called  in  to  redress  the 
balance  of  this  visible  world,  we  sinful  men 
and  women  build  our  hopes  upon  the  great 
saying  that  God's  forgiveness  is  God's  justice : 
if  we  confess  our  sins,  He  is  not  only  faithful, 
but  JUST  in  forgiving  us  our  sins. 


LOVE  IS  JUSTICE 


THE  WAY  OF  WOUNDS 

He  touched  the  leper  tenderly, 
So  in  His  hands  there  came  to  be 

Wide  wounds  that  were  not  wrought  with  nails, 
Alas,  my  hands  are  smooth  and  fair, 
No  wound  is  on  them  anywhere, 

Nor  any  scarlet  scar  of  nails. 

His  lips  lay  on  the  mouth  of  death, 
God's  healing  dwelt  within  their  breath, 

Wherefore  his  lips  grew  pale  with  pain, 
And  no  man  shall  that  pain  divine  ; 
Alas,  my  lips  are  red  with  wine, 

And  they  have  scorned  His  draught  of  pain. 

His  feet  were  torn  of  stone  and  thorn, 
Full  slow  He  moved  on  roads  forlorn, 

But  joyous  hearts  accompanied  Him  ,* 
Alas,  my  feet  are  softly  shod, 
And  on  the  road  that  leads  to  God, 

They  have  not  sought  to  move  with  Him, 

And  so  all  wounded  by  the  way, 
He  came  home  at  the  close  of  day, 

And  angels  met  Him  at  the  Gate, 
Alas,  His  way  I  have  not  known  — 
The  road  forlorn,  the  wounding  stone  — 

And  no  one  waits  me  at  the  Gate, 


IV 

LOVE  IS  JUSTICE 

LOVE  is  the  only  real  justice — never 
was  there  a  more  revolutionary 
ethic !  If  Christianity  is  to  be  judged 
by  its  institutions,  it  must  be  reluctantly  con- 
fessed that  twenty  centuries  of  Christian 
teaching  have  almost  wholly  failed  to  make 
this  strange  ethic  acceptable  to  mankind. 
The  elder  brother  still  makes  broad  his  phy- 
lacteries in  the  home,  in  the  Church,  and  on 
the  seat  of  justice.  The  elder  brother's  sense 
of  offended  respectability  still  masquerades  as 
virtue.  Who  forgives  as  this  father  forgave, 
with  such  completeness  that  he  who  has 
wrought  the  wrong  is  encouraged  to  forget 
that  the  wrong  was  ever  wrought  ?  Where  is 
the  loving  and  tolerant  spirit  of  the  father  less 
visible  than  in  the  Church,  which  crucifies 
men  for  a  word,  and  makes  a  difference  of 
opinion  the  ground  for  deadly  enmity  ?  Of 
47 


48  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

what  administration  of  law  can  we  say  that 
its  chief  object  is  not  the  punishment  of  the 
wrong-doer,  but  his  reclamation  ?  No  exist- 
ing society  is  organized  on  these  principles, 
and  the  only  defense  the  apologists  of  a  bas- 
tard Christianity  make  is  that  it  is  totally  im- 
possible to  apply  the  principles  of  Jesus  to 
the  administration  of  society.  That  is,  at  all 
events,  an  intelligible  defense,  but  is  it  a  legit- 
imate one?  Was  Jesus  merely  a  romantic 
dreamer,  with  entirely  romantic  views  of  love 
and  justice?  Was  He  a  moral  anarchist, 
whose  teachings,  if  interpreted  in  laws,  would 
destroy  the  basis  of  society?  A  strange 
thing  indeed  in  human  history  if  One  who 
has  been  loved  as  no  other  was  ever  loved 
by  multitudes  of  men  and  women  through 
the  ages,  should  prove  after  all  to  be  an 
impracticable  dreamer  or  a  moral  anarchist ! 
But  if  Jesus  was  a  dreamer,  He  dreamed 
true,  and  the  very  reason  why  He  is  loved 
with  such  wide  and  deep  devotion  is  that 
men  do  dimly,  but  instinctively,  perceive  that 
His  life  presents  the  only  perfect  pattern  of 


LOVE  IS  JUSTICE  49 

life  as  it  should  be.  Life,  as  it  exists,  is 
clearly  not  ordered  on  a  social  system  which 
any  wise  or  good  man  can  approve.  Hence 
the  wise  and  good  man  is  perpetually  urged 
to  the  enquiry  whether  Jesus  may  not  after 
all  have  been  right  ? 

Jesus  certainly  acts  as  one  who  is  right. 
He  acts  always  with  the  assured  air  of  one 
for  whom  all  debate  is  closed  and  henceforth 
impossible.  He  knows  His  way,  and  the 
great  moral  dilemmas  of  life  yield  instantly  to 
His  touch.  He  penetrates  to  their  roots  and 
makes  us  feel  that  He  has  touched  the  essential 
element  in  them.  The  dreamer  vindicates 
himself  by  making  it  manifest  that  he  sees 
deeper  into  the  problem  than  the  moralist,  and 
that  his  is  after  all  the  better  morality  because 
it  is  of  higher  social  value,  and  makes  more 
directly  for  social  reconciliation. 

Let  us  take,  for  example,  the  judgment  of 
Jesus  upon  the  woman  who  was  a  sinner  in 
the  house  of  Simon  the  Pharisee.  The  social 
dilemma  of  the  fallen  woman  is  much  more 
difficult  of  solution  than  that  of  the  prodigal 


50  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

son.  We  expect  a  certain  power  of  moral 
convalescence  in  youth  which  has  been  be- 
trayed through  folly.  Sooner  or  later  the 
manly  nature  kindles  with  resentment  at  its 
own  weakness.  Moreover,  social  law  allows 
a  certain  opportunity  of  recuperation  to  man 
which  it  denies  to  woman.  The  sin  of  the 
woman  seems  less  pardonable,  not  because  it 
is  worse  in  itself,  but  because  it  outrages  a 
higher  convention.  Hence  the  strict  moralist 
who  might  make  some  allowance  for  the  hot 
blood  of  youth,  makes  none  for  woman  when 
she  is  betrayed  through  the  affections. 

But  this  is  the  very  point  on  which  Jesus  fixes 
as  essential.  "  The  woman  loved  mucky  there- 
fore let  her  many  sins  be  forgiven"  He  says. 
And  a  true  reading  of  the  story  would  seem 
to  show  that  in  uttering  this  sublime  verdict 
Jesus  is  not  thinking  of  the  woman's  sudden 
and  pure  love  for  Him  ;  He  is  rather  review- 
ing the  entire  nature  of  her  life.  She  had 
loved  much — that  is  her  history  in  a  sentence. 
Cruelty  and  unkindness,  malice  and  bitterness, 
had  no  part  in  her  misdoing.     She  had  been 


LOVE  IS  JUSTICE  51 

undone  through  the  very  sweetness  of  her 
nature,  as  multitudes  of  women  are.  That 
which  was  her  noblest  attribute — her  power 
of  affection — had  been  the  minister  of  her  ruin 
through  lack  of  wisdom  and  restraint.  By 
love  she  had  fallen,  by  love  also  she  shall  be 
redeemed.  Her  sins  were  indeed  many,  but 
behind  all  her  sins  there  was  an  essential 
though  perverted  magnanimity  of  nature,  and 
for  the  sake  of  an  essential  good  in  her, 
which  lay  like  a  shining  pearl  at  the  root  of 
her  debasement,  she  shall  be  forgiven. 

Again  a  strange  verdict,  and  one  that  must 
have  seemed  to  the  Pharisees  entirely  im- 
moral. "  What  becomes  of  justice  ?  "  is  their 
whispered  comment.  Jesus  asserts  His  sense 
of  justice  by  an  exposition  of  the  character  of 
Simon.  Simon  is  destitute  of  love,  of  mag- 
nanimity, even  of  courtesy.  In  his  hard  and 
formal  nature  there  has  been  no  room  for 
emotion ;  passion  of  any  kind  and  he  are 
strangers.  Which  nature  is  radically  the  bet- 
ter, his  or  "  this  woman's  "  ?  Which  presents 
the  more  hopeful  field  to  the  moralist  ?    The 


52  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

soil  of  Simon's  heart  is  thin  and  meagre ;  but 
in  "  this  woman's  "  heart  is  a  soil  overgrown 
with  weeds  indeed,  but  delicately  tempered, 
rich  and  deep,  in  which  the  roots  of  the  fair 
tree  of  life  may  find  abundant  room  and 
nourishment.  Therefore  she  shall  be  forgiven 
for  her  possibilities,  and  such  forgiveness  is 
justice.  To  ignore  these  possibilities,  to  allow 
what  she  has  been  utterly  to  overshadow  the 
lovely  vision  of  what  she  may  be,  when  once 
the  soil  is  clear  of  weeds,  and  the  real  mag- 
nanimity of  her  temperament  is  directed  into 
noble  uses,  would  be  the  most  odious  form  of 
injustice. 

Such  is  the  justice  of  Jesus,  but,  alas,  after 
two  thousand  years  we  still  stand  astonished 
at  it,  more  than  half  doubtful  of  its  validity, 
and,  if  truth  be  told,  secretly  dismayed  at  its 
boldness.  It  is  romantic  justice,  we  say,  but 
is  it  practicable  justice  ?  We  might  at  least 
remember  that  what  we  call  practicable  jus- 
tice has  never  yet  attained  the  gracious  results 
of  Christ's  romantic  justice.  Simon  the  Phari- 
see knows  no  more  how  to  deal  with  "  this 


LOVE  IS  JUSTICE  53 

woman  "  than  the  elder  brother  knew  how  to 
deal  with  the  prodigal.  Such  sense  of  justice 
as  they  possessed  would  have  infallibly  driven 
the  penitent  boy  back  to  the  comradeship  of 
harlots,  and  have  refused  the  penitent  harlot 
the  barest  chance  of  reformation.  Is  not  this 
enough  to  make  the  least  discerning  of  us  all 
suspect  that  Pharisees  and  elder  brothers,  for 
all  their  immaculate  respectability  of  life,  are 
by  no  means  qualified  to  pass  judgment  on 
these  tragedies  of  life  with  which  they  have 
no  acquaintance,  and  cannot  have  an  under- 
standing sympathy?  Does  not  the  entire 
failure  of  legal  justice  with  all  its  apparatus 
of  punishment  and  repression,  to  give  the  sin- 
ner a  vital  impulse  to  withdraw  from  his  sin, 
drive  us  to  the  conclusion,  or  at  least  to  the 
hope,  that  there  must  be  some  better  method 
of  dealing  with  sinners  than  is  sanctioned  by 
conventional  justice  ?  There  is  another 
method — it  is  Christ's  method.  And  the 
thing  to  be  observed  is  that  whereas  conven- 
tional justice  must  certainly  have  failed  in 
either  of  these  crucial  instances,  the  romantic 


54  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

justice  of  Jesus — if  we  must  so  call  it — com- 
pletely succeeded.  The  woman  who  was  a 
sinner  sinned  no  more,  and  the  penitent  son 
henceforth  lived  a  new  life  of  purity  and 
obedience.  In  each  case  love  is  justified,  and 
proves  itself  the  highest  justice. 


LOVE  AND  FORGIVENESS 


LOVE'S  PROFIT 

What  profits  all  the  hate  that  we  have  known 
The  bitter  words,  not  all  unmerited  t 

Have  hearts  e'er  thriven  beneath  our  angry  frown  ? 

Have  roses  grown  from  thistles  we  have  sown? 
Or  lucid  dawns  flowered  out  of  sunsets  red? 
Lo,  all  in  vain 

The  violence  that  added  pain  to  pain, 

And  drove  the  sinner  back  to  sin  again. 

We  had  been  wiser  had  we  walked  Love's  way 

We  had  been  happier  had  we  tenderer  been, 
We  had  found  sunlight  in  the  cloudiest  day 
Had  we  but  loved  the  souls  that  went  astray, 
And  sought  from  shame  their  many  faults  to  screen, 
Lo,  they  and  we 
Had  thus  escaped  Life's  worst  Gethsemane, 
And  found  the  Garden  where  the  angels  be. 

For  One  there  was  who,  angry,  drew  no  sword, 

Derided,  wept  for  those  who  wrought  Him  wrong, 
And  at  the  last  attained  this  great  reward, 
That  those  who  injured  Him  acclaimed  Him  Lord, 
And  wove  His  story  into  holiest  song. 
So  sinners  wrought 
For  Him  the  Kingdom  He  had  vainly  sought, 
And  to  His  feet  the  world }s  frankincense  brought. 


LOVE  AND  FORGIVENESS 

IN  these  instances  it  is  the  singular  com- 
pleteness of  Christ's  forgiveness  which 
is  the  most  startling  feature.  It  would 
be  a  libel  on  human  nature  to  say  that  men 
do  not  forgive  each  other,  but  human  forgive- 
ness usually  has  reservations,  reticences,  con- 
ditions. Jesus  taught  unlimited  forgiveness, 
and  what  He  taught  He  practiced. 

"  Then  came  Peter,  and  said  to  Him,  i  Lord, 

how  oft  shall  my  brother  sin  against  me  and  1 

forgive  him  ?     Until  seven  times  f '    fesus  said 

unto  him,  '  I  say  not  unto  thee,  until  seven 

times  ;  but  until  seventy  times  seven.1 " 

It  is  a  vehement  reply,  in  which  a  quiet 
note  of  scorn  vibrates ;  not  scorn  of  Peter, 
but  scorn  of  any  kind  of  love  that  is  less  than 
limitless.  But  whose  love  is  limitless  ?  Do 
we  not  commonly  speak  of  love  as  being  out- 
worn by  offense  or  neglect  ?  In  the  compacts 
57 


58  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

which  we  make  with  one  another  in  the  name 
of  love,  do  we  not  specifically  name  certain 
offenses  as  unpardonable?  Thus  one  man 
will  say,  "  I  can  forgive  anything  but  mean- 
ness," and  another  says,  "  no  friendship  can 
survive  perfidy "  ;  and  in  the  relations  be- 
tween men  and  women  unfaithfulness  is  held 
to  cancel  all  bonds,  however  indissoluble  they 
may  seem.  Now  and  again,  it  is  true,  some 
strange  voice  reaches  us,  keyed  to  a  different 
music.  Shakespeare,  for  example,  in  his  fa- 
mous one  hundred  and  sixteenth  sonnet, 
boldly  states  that 

Love  is  not  love 
Which  alters  when  it  alteration  finds, 
Or  bends  with  the  remover  to  remove. 

But  who  listens,  who  believes  ?  Yet,  if  it 
should  happen  to  us  to  be  placed  in  the  posi- 
tion of  the  offender,  we  need  no  one  to  con- 
vince us  that  a  true  love  should  be,  in  its  very 
nature,  unalterable.  How  astonished  and 
dismayed  are  we,  when  eyes  that  have  so 
many  times  met  ours  in  tenderness  harden  at 


LOVE  AND  FORGIVENESS        59 

our  presence,  and  lips  which  have  uttered  so 
many  pledges  of  affection,  speak  harshly ! 
We  do  not  deny  our  fault,  indeed ;  but  we 
think  we  can  discern  reasons  why  it  should 
be  regarded  mercifully,  why  the  very  memory 
and  sacredness  of  old  affection  should  make 
harsh  judgment  impossible  ;  nay,  more,  why 
a  deeply  generous  love  should  even  rejoice 
in  the  opportunity  to  forgive,  and  so  should 
sanctify  our  very  shame  with  the  healing 
touch  of  pity,  and  pour  our  tears  into  the 
sacramental  cup  which  ratifies  a  new  fidelity. 
It  is  so  the  sinner  argues,  his  vision  of  what 
love  ought  to  be  growing  clearer  by  his  of- 
fense against  love.  It  is  he  alone,  the  sinner, 
who  can  really  sympathize  with  Christ's  con- 
ception of  love,  for  he  alone  feels  that  this  is 
the  kind  of  love  he  needs.  The  elder  brother 
does  not  understand,  Simon  the  Pharisee  does 
not  understand,  because  neither  has  sinned 
in  such  a  way  as  to  be  flung  helpless  at  the 
feet  of  love.  Peter  did  not  understand  when 
he  put  his  question  to  Christ.  He  spoke  just 
as  the  average  man  would  speak,  who  has 


60  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

never  sounded  the  tragic  depths  in  life,  has 
never  known  the  misery  of  weakness,  and 
therefore  has  no  fellow  feeling  for  the  weak. 
Love  as  such  men  know  it  is  less  a  passion 
than  a  compact.  It  is  a  bond  of  mutual  ad- 
vantage, guarded  from  abuse  by  swift  penalty 
and  forfeit.  It  is  the  reward  of  qualities,  it 
gives  no  more  than  it  gets,  it  exists  by  an 
equal  equipoise  of  service.  If  this  equipoise  is 
disturbed  its  obligations  are  dissolved.  It  is 
easily  affronted,  and  under  affront  becomes 
resentful,  bitter,  even  vindictive.  How  oft 
shall  I  forgive  my  brother  ?  Only  as  oft  as 
a  sense  of  duty  shall  demand,  only  up  to  the 
point  which  is  sanctioned  by  social  custom, 
so  that  I  may  save  my  reputation  for  mag- 
nanimity, always  excepting  certain  sins  for 
which  no  pardon  can  be  legitimately  asked. 
But  the  hour  was  not  far  off  when  Peter  him- 
self was  to  commit  the  very  sins  for  which 
customary  love  has  no  pardon.  He  was  to 
be  guilty  of  those  offenses  which  just  and 
good  men  say  they  cannot  forgive — mean- 
ness, cowardice,  perfidy,  denial.     That  bitter 


LOVE  AND  FORGIVENESS        61 

hour  revealed  the  true  nature  of  love  to  Peter. 
He  knew  that  in  spite  of  his  sin  against  Jesus, 
he  still  loved  Him,  and  since  love  was  unal- 
terable in  him,  he  expected  an  unalterable 
love  in  Christ.  It  was  the  seventy  times 
seven  forgiveness  that  he  needed  then ;  and 
how  sweet  to  recollect  in  that  hour  that  Jesus 
had  taught  a  love  that  knew  no  limit. 
"  Lovest  thou  Me  ? "  was  the  one  word  his 
Master  uttered  when  they  met  in  the  quiet 
morning  light  beside  the  sea.  "  Thou  knowest 
all  thing s,Thou  knowest  that  I  love  Thee"  was 
the  swift  reply.  Storms  disturb  the  sea  but 
the  central  tides  run  on.  Peter  found  with 
equal  astonishment  and  gratitude  that  not 
even  perfidy  was  able  to  separate  him  from 
the  love  of  Christ,  for  that  love  was  unaltera- 
ble as  the  morning  star  which  hung  above  the 
lake,  and  cleansing  as  the  soft  waves  that 
lapped  its  shore. 

The  self-righteous  man  will  never  under- 
stand these  things.  Men  and  women  of 
meagre  natures,  with  whom  love  is  a  com- 
pact, not  a  passion,  will  vehemently  disap- 


62  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

prove  them.  People  of  smooth  lives,  ig- 
norant of  strong  temptations,  will  refuse  even 
to  discuss  them.  Jesus  was  well  aware  of 
their  implacable  indifference  or  cold  hostility, 
and  boldly  said  that  for  such  people  He  had 
no  gospel.  His  mission  was  not  to  the 
whole,  but  to  the  sick.  The  Gospel  of  Jesus 
is  in  truth  not  designed  for  people  of  com- 
fortable lives.  He  has  little  to  say  to  the 
children  of  compromise,  whose  emasculated 
lives  attain  the  semblance  of  virtue  by  the 
cautious  exercise  of  niggard  passions.  They 
can  take  care  of  one  another,  these  righteous 
ones,  whose  very  righteousness  is  a  negation. 
But  Christ's  Gospel  is  for  a  tragic  world.  It 
is  for  the  disinherited,  the  weak,  and  the 
strong  who  have  become  weak;  for  those 
who  have  been  wrecked  by  folly  and  passion, 
and  too  much  love  of  living ;  for  those  whose 
capacities  for  good  and  evil,  being  both  rooted 
in  passion,  are  equally  a  peril  and  a  potency 
—it  is  to  these  Christ  chiefly  speaks.  To 
them  the  Gospel  of  unlimited  forgiveness  and 
unalterable  love  is  the  only  vital,  because  the 


LOVE  AND  FORGIVENESS        63 

only  efficacious  Gospel.  The  man  whose 
very  virility  of  nature  makes  him  the  easy 
prey  of  murderous  joy ;  the  man  shut  up  in 
prison,  who  hears  from  the  lips  that  once 
spake  love  to  him,  the  sentence  of  inexpiable 
disgrace ;  the  outcast  from  honour,  gnawing 
the  bitter  husks  of  hated  sin  in  far  lands,  and 
tortured  in  his  dreams  by  the  sweetness  of 
recollected  happiness ;  these,  and  all  like 
these,  will  understand  Jesus,  for  it  is  to  them 
He  speaks.  Their  very  sin  interprets  Him. 
To  their  forlorn  ears  the  love  He  teaches  will 
sound  not  strange,  for  it  is  the  only  kind  of 
love  that  can  redeem  them ;  nor  foolish,  for 
it  is  the  only  love  that  dare  stoop  low  enough 
to  lift  them  up.  These  will  not  fail  to  under- 
stand what  conventional  righteousness  finds 
so  difficult ;  these,  and  also  all  good  women 
who  have  had  acquaintance  with  either  deep 
love  or  real  grief,  because  it  is  a  loving 
woman's  sweet  prerogative  and  divine  dispo- 
sition to  forgive,  and  to  draw  from  her  grace 
of  forgiveness  a  more  tender  and  maternal 
power  of  loving. 


THE  PRACTICE  OF  LOVE 


FELLOW  SUFFERERS 

When  men  of  malice  wrought  the  crown  for  Thee 

Didst  Thou  complain  ? 
Nay ;  in  each  thorn  God's  finger  Thou  didst  see, 

His  love  thro*  pain. 

His  finger  did  but  press  the  ripened  Vine, 

Thy  fruit  to  prove, 
That  henceforth  all  the  world  might  drink  the  wine 

Of  Thy  great  love. 

So  when  the  darkness  rose  about  Thy  feet 

Thy  lips  met  His, 
Amid  the  upper  light,  in  Death's  long  sweet 

Releasing  kiss. 

And  shall  I  cry  aloud  in  anger  when 

Men  make  for  me 
A  Cross  less  harsh  ?     Nay,  I'll  remember  then 

Thy  constancy. 

And  if  the  darkness  hide  me  from  Thy  sight 

At  God's  command, 
I'll  talk  with  Thee  all  thro'  the  prayerful  night, 

And  touch  Thy  hand ; 

Greatly  content,  if  I  whose  life  has  been 

So  long  unwise, 
May,  wounded,  on  Thy  wounded  bosom  lean 

In  Paradise. 


VI 

THE  PRACTICE  OF  LOVE 

SO  convinced  was  Jesus  that  love  alone 
was  the  master  law  of  life,  that  He 
based  His  own  life  wholly  on  His  con- 
viction, cheerfully  accepting  all  the  risks 
which  were  implied.  He  was  perfectly  aware 
of  the  consequences  to  Himself  and  His 
reputation  when  He  made  Himself  the  friend 
of  publicans  and  sinners.  These  conse- 
quences He  ignored,  making  Himself  of  no 
reputation,  that  He  might  uplift  by  His  love 
those  who  needed  His  love  the  most.  Under 
the  constant  contradiction  of  those  who  mis- 
took His  spirit,  and  even  libelled  His  charac- 
ter, He  manifested  neither  bitterness  nor  re- 
sentment. He  suffered  injuries  without  re- 
taliation, and  went  so  far  as  to  denounce  all 
forms  of  retaliation  as  a  wasteful  expenditure 
of  spirit,  wrong  in  themselves,  and  attaining 

no  end  but  the  worse  injury  of  those  who 
67 


68  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

employed  them.  He  might  easily  have  used 
the  miraculous  power  which  He  possessed 
for  His  own  defense,  and  for  the  confusion  of 
His  enemies.  Had  He  been  selfishly  am- 
bitious, He  might  have  organized  a  party  so 
strong,  that  it  would  have  become  an  irre- 
sistible force,  which  would  have  shattered  the 
old  order  whose  evils  He  denounced,  and 
have  made  Him  the  dictator  of  a  new  order, 
based  on  the  ideals  in  which  He  believed. 
He  did  none  of  these  things,  not  through  las- 
situde of  spirit  or  failure  to  perceive  their 
possible  issues,  but  simply  because  these  were 
not  the  things  to  do.  In  His  judgment  the 
only  abiding  kingdom  belonged  to  the  meek. 
He  who  suffered  injustice  with  patience  would 
prove  the  ultimate  conqueror.  There  was 
an  irresistible  might  in  love  and  meekness 
against  which  the  people  raged  in  vain. 
Love  was  a  working  and  practicable  law  of 
life ;  in  the  long  issue  of  things  it  was  the 
only  law  that  justified  itself. 

Was    Jesus    right  in  these  conclusions? 
Can  human  life  proceed  along  the  lines  He 


THE  PRACTICE  OF  LOVE        69 

indicated  ?  Certainly  it  has  never  yet  done 
so.  The  woman  who  is  a  sinner  finds  no 
Jesus  to  absolve  her  utterly  among  the  priests 
of  His  religion.  The  resentment  of  injury  is 
regarded  even  by  good  men  as  entirely  justi- 
fied when  injury  to  the  person  involves  the 
rights  of  social  order.  Force  is  regarded  by 
persons  of  the  highest  amiability  as  necessary 
to  the  defense  of  society,  and  the  Church  ap- 
plauds the  punishments  inflicted  by  the  civil 
magistrate,  and  even  hastens  to  bless  the 
banners  and  baptize  the  deadly  weapons  of 
the  warrior.  Meekness,  which  endures  injury 
without  resentment,  is  regarded  as  the  sign  of 
a  servile  and  cowardly  spirit,  and  is  the  sub- 
ject of  ridicule  and  contempt.  No  Christian 
society  exists  in  which  a  Peter  would  be  freely 
pardoned  his  offense  ;  the  best  that  could 
be  hoped  would  be  the  infliction  of  humiliat- 
ing penance,  and  a  reluctant  reinstatement 
in  the  apostleship  after  a  long  period  of  bitter 
ostracism.  Yet  who  would  venture  to  chal- 
lenge the  conduct  of  Jesus  in  these  respects  ? 
Who  would   not  find   his  opinion  of  Jesus 


yo  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

tragically  lowered,  and  his  adoration  prac- 
tically destroyed,  if  some  new  and  more  au- 
thentic Gospel  were  discovered  by  which  we 
learned  that  Jesus  smote  with  leprosy  the 
Pharisees  who  resisted  Him,  as  Elisha  smote 
Gehazi:  that  He  sanctioned  the  stoning  of 
the  adultress  taken  in  the  act  of  sin  ;  or  that 
He  branded  Simon  Peter  for  his  perfidy,  and 
drove  him  out  forever  from  the  apostleship 
he  had  disgraced,  denouncing  him  as  a  son 
of  hell  and  a  predestined  citizen  of  the  outer 
darkness  ?  Could  such  acts  be  attributed  to 
Jesus,  though  each  act  in  itself  would  pre- 
cisely represent  the  common  temper  of  Chris- 
tian courts  and  so-called  Christian  men  under 
circumstances  of  similar  and  equal  provoca- 
tion, the  worship  of  Jesus  would  at  once  cease 
throughout  the  world. 

The  dilemma  is  truly  tragic.  A  Jesus  who 
should  be  proved  to  have  lived  according  to 
the  conventions  we  respect,  who  did  not  rise 
above  conventional  ideals  of  either  love  or 
justice,  who  approved  force,  and  resented 
injuries,  who  repudiated  the  friend  who  had 


THE  PRACTICE  OF  LOVE        71 

betrayed  Him,  who  shunned  the  contact  of 
persons  whose  touch  dishonoured  Him — 
such  a  Jesus  would  cease  to  be  our  Jesus. 
He  would  no  longer  attract  us,  He  would 
not  touch  our  hearts,  He  would  barely  com- 
mand our  respect.  Astounding  fact !  Those 
very  things  in  the  life  of  Jesus  which  we  dis- 
approve are  the  things  for  which  we  love 
Him  ;  and  those  tempers  which  we  ourselves 
disallow  are  in  Him  the  sources  of  our  adora- 
tion. 

We  are  bound  therefore  to  ask,  can  that 
method  of  conduct  be  wrong  which  has  won 
this  triumphant  issue  ?  It  may  be  ironically 
true  that  we  love  Him  most  for  those  very 
acts  of  His  which  we  are  least  likely  to 
imitate;  but  is  not  this  our  tacit  testimony 
to  the  essential  Tightness  of  these  acts  ?  In 
our  better,  or  our  softer  moments;  or  in 
those  moments  when  we  are  most  conscious 
of  the  cruelty  of  life,  and  most  in  need  of 
love,  do  we  not  feel,  as  the  life  of  Jesus  grows 
before  us,  that  this  is  how  life  should  be 
lived  ?    Dare  we  question  that  a  world  gov- 


72  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

erned  wholly  by  the  ideals  of  Jesus  would  be 
a  far  happier  world  than  this  we  know? 
Love,  as  the  one  necessary  law  of  life, 
clearly  stands  justified  in  Jesus,  since  it  has 
produced  the  most  adorable  character  in 
history.  If  we  admit  this,  it  is  foolish  to 
speak  of  Christ's  ideals  as  impracticable. 
What  we  approve  in  another's  life  we  can- 
not wholly  repudiate  in  our  own.  Let  it  be 
added  also,  that  a  life  lived  by  another  is  al- 
ways a  life  that  others  can  live.  We  may 
seek  to  cover  our  failure,  and  the  world's 
failure,  to  reproduce  the  life  of  Jesus,  by  the 
plea  of  incompetence,  but  against  our  plea 
Jesus  records  His  verdict,  "  Behold  I  have 
left  you  an  example" 

From  that  verdict  there  is  no  appeal. 


LOVE  AND  JUDGMENT 


MOTHER  AND  SON 

When,  for  the  last  time,  from  His  Mother's  home 

The  Son  went  forth,  foreseeing  perfectly 
What  doom  would  happen,  and  what  things  would 
come, 
Was  there  upon  His  lips  no  stifled  sigh 
For  happy  hours  that  should  return  no  more, 

Long  days  among  the  lilies,  pure  delights 
Of  wanderings  by  Galilee' 's  fair  shore, 

And  converse  with  His  friends  on  starry  nights  ? 
Tet  brave  He  stepped  into  the  setting  sun 
With    this   one  word,  "  Father,   Thy  will  be 
done!" 

With  a  low  voice  the  stooping  olive-trees 

Whispered  to  Him  of  His  Gethsemane  ; 
The  cruel  thorn-bush,  clinging  to  His  knees, 

Proclaimed,  "  /  shall  be  made  a  crown  for  Thee  !  " 
And,  looking  back,  His  eyes  made  dim  with  loss, 

He  saw  the  lintel  of  the  cottage  grow 
In  shape  againt  the  sunset,  like  a  cross, 

And  knew  He  had  not  very  far  to  go. 

Tet  brave  He  stepped  into  the  setting  sun, 

Still  saying  this  one  word, "  Thy  will  be  done  /  " 


So,  when   the  last  time,  from  His  Mother's  home 

The  Son  passed  out,  no  choir  of  angels  came, 
As  long  before  at  Bethlehem  they  had  come, 

To  comfort  Him  upon  the  road  of  shame. 
Alone  He  went,  and  stopped  a  little  space, 

As  one  o9  erburdened,  stopped  to  look  again 
Upon  His  Mother's  pleading  form  and  face, 

And  wept  for  her,  that  she  should  know  this  pain. 
Then,  silently,  He  faced  the  setting  sun 
And  said,  "  Oh,  Father,  let  Thy  will  be  done! 


VII 

LOVE  AND  JUDGMENT 

JUST  as  Jesus  called  in  the  vision  of  the 
unseen  world  to  redress  the  balance  of 
the  visible  world,  when  He  said  that 
there  was  more  joy  in  heaven  over  the  peni- 
tent sinner  than  over  ninety  and  nine  just  men 
who  needed  no  repentance,  so  in  His  final 
addresses  to  His  followers  He  again  dis- 
closes the  unseen  world.  These  final  ad- 
dresses deal  with  the  tremendous  problem  of 
a  future  judgment.  Over  no  problem  does 
the  human  mind  hover  with  such  breathless 
interest,  such  unfeigned  alarm.  But  with 
characteristic  perversity  the  elements  in 
Christ's  vision  of  the  judgment  on  which 
men  have  seized  most  tenaciously,  are  pre- 
cisely those  elements  which  are  least  intel- 
ligible, and  least  capable  of  strict  definition. 
It  is  around  the  word  "eternal"  and  the 
nature  of  the  punishment  suggested,  that  the 

77 


78  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

theological  battles  of  centuries  have  centred. 
Yet  the  really  central  point  of  both  the  vision 
and  the  teaching,  is  not  here  at  all ;  and  it 
is  only  man's  habitual  love  of  enigma  which 
can  explain  the  passion  with  which  men  have 
opposed  one  another  over  the  interpretation 
of  words  and  phrases  which  must  always  re- 
main enigmatic. 

Let  us  turn  to  Christ's  vision  of  the  Judg- 
ment, as  recorded  by  St.  Matthew,  and  what 
do  we  find?  First  that  the  same  Son  of 
Man,  whose  whole  life  was  an  exposition  of 
the  law  of  love,  is  Himself  the  final  judge  of 
men  and  nations.  "  The  Son  of  Man  shall 
sit  on  the  throne  of  His  glory \  and  before  Him 
shall  be  gathered  all  the  nations,  and  He  shall 
separate  them  one  from  another,  as  the  shep- 
herd separates  the  sheep  from  the  goats."  No 
alien  judge,  observe,  unacquainted  with  the 
nature  of  man,  but  one  who  knows  human 
life  so  thoroughly  that  He  is  the  representa- 
tive man — "  the  Son  of  Man  "  ;  and  although 
He  is  now  the  Judge,  yet  He  still  calls  Himself 
by  the  tender  name  of  the  Shepherd.    The 


LOVE  AND  JUDGMENT  79 

tribunal  is  therefore  the  tribunal  of  love,  and 
the  court  is  the  court  of  love.  He  who  shall 
judge  mankind  is  He  who  judges  Peter  and 
the  woman  who  was  a  sinner,  He  of  whose 
tenderness  and  sympathy  we  have  assurance 
in  a  hundred  acts  of  mercy,  pity,  and  mag- 
nanimity. Yet  for  centuries  the  Church  has 
sung  its  terrible  Dies  Irce,  has  clothed  the 
judgment  seat  with  thunder,  has  put  into  the 
hands  of  Jesus  bolts  of  flame,  and  has  ap- 
plauded and  enthroned  in  His  sanctuaries 
such  pictorial  blasphemies  as  Michael  An- 
gelo's  Last  Judgment ',  which  represents  Jesus 
as  an  angry  Hercules,  and  even  gratifies  the 
private  spite  of  the  artist  by  overwhelming 
in  a  sea  of  fire  one  who  had  offered  him  a 
personal  affront. 

Blasphemy  indeed,  and  falsehood  too  ;  for 
the  second  thing  we  find  is  that  the  one 
principle  which  governs  the  entire  vision  of 
Jesus  is  that  Love  judges,  and  that  it  is  by 
Love  that  men  are  tested.  The  men  and 
women  of  loving  disposition,  who  have 
wrought  many  little  acts  of  kindness  which 


80  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

were  to  them  so  natural  and  simple  that  they 
do  not  so  much  as  recollect  them,  find  them- 
selves mysteriously  selected  for  infinite  re- 
wards. The  men  and  women  of  opposite 
disposition,  in  spite  of  all  their  outward  recti- 
tude of  behaviour,  find  themselves  numbered 
with  the  goats.  A  cup  of  cold  water  given 
to  a  child,  a  meal  bestowed  upon  a  beggar, 
a  garment  shared  with  the  naked — these 
things  purchase  heaven.  One  who  Himself 
had  been  thirsty,  hungry,  and  naked,  judges 
their  worth,  and  He  judges  by  His  own  re- 
membered need.  It  is  love  alone  that  is 
divine,  love  alone  that  prepares  the  soul  for 
divine  felicity.  With  a  beautiful  uncon- 
sciousness of  any  merit,  the  people  who  have 
lived  lovingly  plead  ignorance  of  their  own 
lovely  acts  and  tempers  ;  but  they  have  been 
witnessed  by  the  hierarchies  of  heaven,  the 
morning  stars  have  sung  of  them,  they  have 
made  glad  the  heart  of  God ;  and  the  reward 
of  these  humble  servitors  of  love  now  is  that 
having  added  to  the  joy  of  God,  henceforth 
they  shall  share  that  joy  forever. 


LOVE  AND  JUDGMENT  81 

Never  was  there  vision  at  once  so  ex- 
quisite and  so  surprising.  It  is  like  a  child's 
dream  of  heaven  and  judgment,  so  un- 
touched is  it  by  the  conventions  of  the 
world,  so  innocent,  so  daring,  so  tenderly 
imagined,  and  so  impossibly  probable.  Alas, 
that  most  of  us  are  too  wise  to  understand 
it,  and  too  worldly  to  receive  it.  Yet  in 
nothing  that  Jesus  uttered  is  there  clearer 
evidence  of  deliberation.  And  it  is  of  a  piece 
with  all  He  taught ;  so  much  so  indeed  that 
without  it,  His  teaching  would  be  incom- 
plete. 

Truly,  we  may  say,  the  Heaven  of  Jesus 
is  a  strangely  ordered  Kingdom ;  for  in 
it  beggars  are  comforted  for  apparently 
no  other  reason  than  that  they  need  com- 
fort ;  the  doers  of  forgotten  kindnesses  are 
crowned  with  sudden  splendours  of  divine 
approval  while  the  lords  of  genius  and  the 
makers  of  empire  are  forgotten  ;  and  the 
very  anthems  of  the  blessed  are  hushed  into 
silent  wondering  and  joy  when  solitary  pen- 
itents turn  homewards  from  the  roads  of  sin  ! 


82  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

But  it  is  not  stranger  than  that  kingdom  in 
which  Jesus  lived  habitually,  the  kingdom  He 
created  round  Him  in  His  earthly  life.  In 
that  kingdom  also  love  was  lord,  and  she 
who  anointed  the  tired  feet  of  the  Master 
against  His  burial  was  promised  everlasting 
remembrance,  and  she  who  out  of  her  penury 
gave  her  mite  to  the  poor  was  praised  as 
having  done  more  than  all  the  rich,  who 
from  their  abundance  distributed  careless 
and  unmissed  benefactions.  In  all  that 
Jesus  says  and  does  the  same  sequence  of 
thought  runs  clear,  the  same  master  principle 
rules  the  various  result.  Life  is  a  unity 
either  here  or  hereafter,  and  love  is,  and 
must  evermore  remain,  the  one  temper  that 
gives  significance  to  life. 


THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  SIMPLE 


THE  WELL 

IVhen  Galilee  took  morning* s  flame 
Throy  fields  of  flowers  the  Master  came. 
He  stopped  before  a  cottage  door, 
And  took  from  humble  hands  the  store 
Of  crumbs  that  from  the  table  fell, 
And  water  from  the  living  well. 
He  smiled,  and  with  a  great  content 
Upon  the  road  of  flowers  went. 

Foredoomed  upon  the  road  of  shame 
With  bleeding  feet  the  Master  came, 
And  found  the  cottage  door  again, 
u  No  wine  have  we  to  ease  Thy  pain, 
But  only  water  in  a  cup." 
The  Master  slowly  drank  it  up. 
"  Thy  kindness  turns  it  into  wine," 
He  said,  "  and  makes  the  gift  divine,'* 

Upon  a  day  the  Master  trod 

The  road  of  stars  that  leads  to  God, 

All  tasks  for  men  accomplished. 

"  They  gave  Me  hate,"  He  softly  said, 

"  But  Love  in  larger  measure  gave, 

And  therefore  was  I  strong  to  save. 

I  had  not  reached  the  Cross  that  day 

But  for  the  Well  beside  the  way," 


VIII 

THE   WISDOM  OF  THE  SIMPLE 

IF  these  things  be  true,  if  the  whole  tra- 
dition of  Jesus  is  an  exposition  of  love 
as  the  law  of  life,  the  deduction  is  en- 
tirely simple,  and  as  logical  as  it  is  simple. 
That  deduction  has  been  already  stated.  It 
is  that  Christianity  is  a  method  of  life  by 
which  men  and  women  are  taught  and  in- 
spired to  love  as  Jesus  loved,  and  to  live 
loving  and  lovable  lives.  It  has  little  to  do 
with  creeds,  and  still  less  with  formal  codes 
of  conduct.  For  this  reason  such  a  defini- 
tion of  Christianity  will  satisfy  neither  the 
theologian  nor  the  philosopher.  Jesus  never 
expected  that  it  would.  He  knew  that  the  one 
would  regard  it  as  heretical,  and  the  other  as 
so  deficient  in  subtlety  as  to  seem  foolish. 
Therefore  He  made  His  appeal  to  simple 
and  natural  people,  saying  that  what  was 
85 


86  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

hidden  from  the  wise  and  prudent,  was  re- 
vealed to  babes. 

The  simple  and  natural  people  under- 
stood Jesus;  they  always  do.  The  sophis- 
ticated and  artificial  people  did  not  under- 
stand Him ;  they  never  will.  With  scarcely 
an  exception  the  people  of  intelligence  and 
culture  regarded  Him  with  disdain,  with- 
drew from  Him,  or  violently  opposed  Him. 
The  reason  for  their  conduct  lay  not  so 
much  in  either  their  culture  or  their  intelli- 
gence, as  in  the  kind  of  life  that  seemed  to  be 
necessary  to  them  as  the  expression  of  their 
culture. 

Thus,  they  were  full  of  prejudices,  pre- 
possessions, and  foregone  conclusions,  all  of 
which  had  the  sanction  of  their  culture.  It 
was  enough  for  them  to  know  that  Jesus 
came  from  Nazareth  and  was  unlettered ; 
this  produced  in  them  violent  scorn  and 
antipathy.  They  were  still  further  offended 
because  He  used  none  of  the  shibboleths 
with  which  they  were  familiar.  Nor  could 
they  conceive  of  any  life  as  satisfactory  but 


THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  SIMPLE    87 

the  kind  of  life  they  lived,  and  that  was  a 
life  of  social  complexity,  ruled  by  conven- 
tional usages  and  maxims,  and  essentially 
artificial  in  ideal  and  practice.  Jesus,  there- 
fore, turned  from  them  to  the  simple  and 
natural  people,  fishermen,  artisans,  and 
humble  women,  in  whom  the  natural  in- 
stincts had  fuller  play.  His  reward  was  im- 
mediate ;  then,  and  ever  since,  the  Common 
People  heard  Him  gladly. 

The  reason  why  simple  and  natural  people 
readily  understand  Jesus  is  that  in  the  kind 
of  life  they  live  the  primal  emotions  are  su- 
preme. The  very  narrowness  of  their  social 
outlook  intensifies  those  emotions.  They 
have  little  to  distract  them  ;  they  are  not  be- 
wildered by  endless  disquisitions  on  conduct,, 
and  religion  itself  is  for  them  an  emotion 
rather  than  a  systematized  creed.  For  the 
poor  man  home,  children,  fireside  affection, 
mean  more  than  for  the  rich  man,  because 
they  are  his  only  wealth.  This  is  the  lesson 
which  Wordsworth  has  so  nobly  taught  in 
his  "  Song  at  the  Feast  of  Brougham  Castle" — 


88  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

How,   by  heaven's   grace  this  Clifford's  heart  was 

framed, 
How  he,  long  forced  in  humble  walks  to  go, 
Was  softened  into  feeling,  soothed  and  tamed. 

Love  had  he  found  in  huts  where  poor  men  lie ; 
His  daily  teachers  had  been  woods  and  rills, 
The  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky, 
The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills. 

People  who  live  thus,  in  wise  simplicity, 
undistracted  by  the  numerous  illusions  of  an 
artificial  life,  have  no  difficulty  in  accepting 
Christ's  teaching  that  love  is  the  supreme 
law  of  life,  because  love  means  everything  to 
them  in  the  kind  of  life  they  lead.  In  the 
wisdom  of  the  heart  they  are  more  learned 
than  the  wisest  Pharisee,  who  is  rarely  "  soft- 
ened into  feeling,"  whose  whole  social  life  in- 
deed imposes  a  restraint  on  feeling.  What 
peasant  father  would  not  welcome  a  return- 
ing prodigal,  what  peasant  mother  would  not 
open  her  arms  wide  to  gather  to  her  bosom  a 
penitent  daughter,  recovered  from  the  cruel 
snare  of  cities  ?  Certainly  one  is  much  more 
likely  to  find  such  acts  of  pure  feeling  among 


THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  SIMPLE    89 

peasant  folk  than  among  the  rich  and  cultured, 
for  the  peasant  cares  less  for  opinion,  is  less 
respectful  of  social  etiquette,  and  follows  more 
closely  in  his  actions  the  instincts  of  primal 
affection.  Who  has  not  discovered  among 
poor  and  humble  folk  a  strange  and  beauti- 
ful lenience,  the  lenience  of  a  great  compas- 
sion, towards  those  sins  which  in  more  artifi- 
cial conditions  of  society  are  held  to  justify 
the  most  violent  condemnation,  and  do  in- 
deed close  the  heart  to  pity  ?  In  poor  men's 
huts  beside  the  Sea  of  Galilee  Jesus  Himself 
had  found  love,  love  in  all  its  divine  daring, 
lenience,  and  magnanimity,  and  He  knew 
that  among  people  like  these  He  would  be 
understood.  He  also  knew  that  the  only 
people  fitted  to  interpret  His  doctrine  of 
sovereign  love  to  the  world  were  these  simple 
folk  of  the  lake  and  field,  and  therefore  to 
them  He  committed  His  Gospel,  and  from 
them  He  chose  His  disciples. 

It  needed  a  peasant  Christ  to  teach  these 
things,  for  no  other  could  have  imagined 
them,  no  other  could  have  had  the  daring  and 


90  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

simplicity  to  utter  them.  A  peasant  Christ 
He  was,  living,  thinking,  and  acting  as  a  peas- 
ant even  in  His  highest  moments  of  inspira- 
tion. It  was  because  He  always  remained 
a  peasant  that  He  was  able  to  see  so  clearly 
the  defects  of  that  more  intricate  social  system 
to  which  His  ministry  introduced  Him.  He 
brought  with  Him  a  new  scale  of  values, 
which  He  had  learned  in  the  school  of  a  more 
primal  life  than  could  be  found  in  cities. 
Nature  always  spoke  in  Him,  convention 
never.  In  His  treatment  of  sin  it  is  always 
the  voice  of  Nature  that  we  hear  triumphing 
over  the  verdicts  of  convention.  The  sins 
which  convention  regards  as  inexpiable  are 
sins  of  passion  ;  the  sins  which  it  excuses  are 
sins  of  temper,  such  as  greed,  malice,  craft, 
unkindness,  cruelty.  Jesus  entirely  reverses 
the  scale.  His  pity  is  reserved  for  outcasts, 
His  harshest  words  are  addressed  to  those 
whom  the  world  calls  good.  Folly  He  views 
with  infinite  compassion — the  foolish  man  is 
as  a  lost  sheep  whose  very  helplessness  in- 
vokes our  pity.     But  for  the  man  of  hard  and 


THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  SIMPLE    91 

self-sufficient  nature,  whose  very  righteous- 
ness is  a  mixture  of  prudence  and  egoism,  He 
has  only  words  of  flame.  An  offense  against 
virtue  counts  for  less  with  Him  than  an  offense 
against  love.  No  wonder  the  Pharisees  called 
Him  a  blasphemer !  Were  the  true  nature  of 
Christ's  teaching  understood  to-day  many 
who  profess  to  revere  Him  would  join  in  the 
same  accusation.  What  more  offensive  and 
unpalatable  truth  could  be  presented  to  man- 
kind than  this  on  which  Jesus  constantly  in- 
sists, that  sins  of  temper  are  much  more  harm- 
ful than  sins  of  passion,  that  they  spring  from 
a  more  incurable  malignancy  of  nature,  that 
they  produce  far  wider  and  more  disastrous 
suffering  ? 

Yet  the  truth  is  clear  enough  to  all  broadly 
truthful  and  simple  natures,  which  are  not 
bewildered  by  conventional  views  of  right 
and  wrong.  Who  has  occasioned  more  suf- 
fering, the  youth  who  has  sinned  against 
himself  in  wild  folly  and  repented,  or  the 
man  who  has  planned  his  life  with  that  cold 
craft  and  deliberate  cruelty  which  sacrifices 


92  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

everything  to  self-advantage  ?  Can  any  hu- 
man mind  measure  the  various  and  almost 
infinite  wrongs  committed  by  the  man  who 
piles  up  through  years  of  sordid  avarice  an 
unjust  fortune?  Who  can  count  the  broken 
hearts  in  the  pathway  of  that  implacable 
ambition  which  "wades  through  slaughter 
to  a  throne  "  ?  These  things  may  not  be  ap- 
parent to  the  man  whose  nature  is  subdued 
to  the  hue  of  that  artificial  society  in  which 
he  lives,  a  society  which  permits  such  crimes 
to  pass  unquestioned.  They  are  certainly 
not  perceived  by  the  criminals  themselves. 
To-day,  as  in  the  day  of  Christ,  they  "  devour 
widows'  houses,  and  for  a  pretense  make 
long  prayers/'  save,  perhaps,  that  more  blind 
than  the  ancient  Pharisees,  their  prayers 
seem  real,  and  they  themselves  are  uncon- 
scious of  pretense.  Now  also,  as  then,  they 
give  their  tithes  in  conventional  benevolence, 
forgetting,  and  hoping  to  make  others  forget, 
the  sources  of  their  wealth  in  their  use  of  it. 
How  is  it  that  such  men  are  so  unconscious 
of  offense  ?    Simply  because  they  have  never 


THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  SIMPLE    93 

grasped  Christ's  deliberate  statement  that 
sins  of  temper  are  much  worse  than  sins  of 
passion ;  that  cruelty  is  a  worse  thing  than 
folly ;  that  the  wrong  wrought  by  squander- 
ing the  substance  in  a  far  country  is  more 
quickly  repaired,  and  more  easily  forgiven, 
than  the  wrong  of  hoarding  one's  substance 
in  the  avarice  which  neglects  the  poor,  or 
adding  to  it  by  methods  which  trample  the 
weak  and  humble  in  the  dust,  as  deserving 
neither  pity  nor  attention. 

Yet  it  needs  but  a  very  brief  examination 
of  society  to  prove  the  truth  of  Christ's  con- 
tention ;  very  little  experience  of  life  to  dis- 
cover that  the  utmost  corruption  of  the 
human  heart  lies  in  lovelessness.  The 
spiteful  and  rancorous  temper,  always  seek- 
ing occasions  of  offense ;  the  jealous  spirit 
which  cannot  bear  the  spectacle  of  another's 
joy ;  the  bitter  nagging  tongue,  darting 
hither  and  thither  like  a  serpent's  fang  full 
of  poison,  and  diabolically  skilled  in  wound- 
ing ;  the  sour  and  grudging  disposition, 
which  seems  most  contented  with  itself  when 


94  THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

it  has  produced  the  utmost  misery  in  others ; 
the  narrow  mind  and  heart  destitute  of 
magnanimity ;  the  cold  and  egoistic  tem- 
perament, which  demands  subservience  of 
others  and  receives  their  service  without 
thanks,  as  though  the  acknowledgment  of 
gratitude  were  weakness — these  are  common 
and  typical  forms  of  lovelessness,  and  who 
can  estimate  the  sum  of  suffering  they  in- 
flict ?  Their  fruit  is  everywhere  the  same ; 
love  repressed,  children  estranged,  the  home 
made  intolerable.  It  does  but  add  to  the 
offense  of  these  unlovely  people  that  in  what 
the  world  calls  morality  they  are  above  re- 
proach, for  they  instill  a  hatred  of  morality 
itself  by  their  appropriation  of  it.  Before 
them  love  flies  aghast,  and  the  tenderest 
emotions  of  the  heart  fall  withered.  Could 
the  annals  of  human  misery  be  fairly  written, 
it  might  appear  that  not  all  the  lusts  and 
crimes  which  are  daily  blazoned  to  the  eye 
have  wrought  such  wide-spread  misery,  have 
inflicted  such  general  unhappiness,  as  these 
sins  of  temper,  so  common  in  their  operation 


THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  SIMPLE    95 

that  they  pass  almost  unrebuked,  but  so 
wide-spread  in  their  effects  that  their  havoc 
is  discovered  in  every  feature  of  our  social 
life. 


THE  REVELATIONS  OF  GRIEF 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PRIDE 

I  lived  with  Pride ;  the  house  was  hung 

With  tapestries  of  rich  design. 
Of  many  houses,  this  among 

Them  all  was  richest,  and  'twas  mine. 
But  in  the  chambers  burned  no  fire, 

Tho'  all  the  furniture  was  gold ; 
I  sickened  of  fulfilled  desire, 

The  House  of  Pride  was  very  cold. 

I  lived  with  Knowledge  ;  very  high 
-     Her  house  rose  on  a  mountain's  side. 
I  watched  the  stars  roll  through  the  sky, 

I  read  the  scroll  of  Time  flung  wide. 
But  in  that  house,  austere  and  bare, 

No  children  played,  no  laughter  clear 
Was  heard,  no  voice  of  mirth  was  there, 

The  House  was  high  but  very  drear. 

I  lived  with  Love ;  all  she  possest 

Was  but  a  tent  beside  a  stream. 
She  warmed  my  cold  hands  in  her  breast, 

She  wove  around  my  sleep  a  dream. 
And  One  there  was  with  face  divine 

Who  softly  came,  when  day  was  spent^ 
And  turned  our  water  into  wine, 

And  made  our  life  a  sacrament. 


IX 

THE  REVELATIONS   OF  GRIEF 

NEVERTHELESS  there  are  occa- 
sions in  life  when  these  things  be- 
come evident  to  even  the  least  ob- 
servant of  us.  When  we  stand  beside  the 
newly  dead  the  most  intolerable  reflection  of 
countless  mourners  is  that  their  tears  fall  on 
quiet  lips  to  which  they  gave  scant  caresses, 
in  the  days  of  health  :  their  passionate  words 
of  love  are  uttered  to  unhearing  ears,  which 
in  life  waited  eagerly  for  such  assurances  as 
these,  and  waited  vainly.  All  the  purity  and 
beauty  of  the  vanished  human  soul  is  re- 
vealed to  us  now,  when  it  is  no  longer  in  our 
power  to  gladden  or  delight  it  with  our  kind- 
ness or  our  praise.  All  the  willing  service 
rendered  to  us  by  those  folded  hands  and 
resting  feet,  which  we  so  thanklessly  ac- 
cepted, is  seen  as  a  thing  dear  and  precious 
to  us  now,  when  the  opportunity  of  thanks  is 
99 


ioo         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

past  forever.  What  would  we  give  now  if  but 
for  one  brief  hour  we  might  recall  our  dead  just 
to  say  the  tender  things  we  might  have  said 
and  did  not  say,  through  all  those  days  and 
years  when  they  were  with  us, — presences  fa- 
miliar and  accustomed,  moving  round  us  with 
so  soft  a  tread  that  we  scarce  regarded  them, 
nor  laid  on  them  detaining  hands,  nor  lifted 
our  preoccupied  and  careless  eyes  to  theirs  ! 

For  most  of  us,  alas,  it  is  not  Grief  and 
Love  alone  who  conduct  us  to  the  cham- 
bers of  the  dead ;  the  sad  and  silent  Angel 
of  Reproach  also  stands  beside  the  bed, 
and  the  shadow  of  his  wings  falls  upon  the 
features  fixed  in  their  immutable  appeal,  their 
pathetic  and  unwilling  accusation.  Then  it  is 
that  veil  after  veil  is  lifted  from  the  past,  till 
in  the  pitiless  light  we  read  ourselves  with  a 
new  understanding  of  our  faults.  We  see  that 
through  some  element  of  hardness  in  our- 
selves which  we  allowed  to  grow  unchecked ; 
through  vain  pride,  or  obstinate  perversity, 
or  mere  thoughtless  disregard,  we  repulsed 
love  from  the  dominion  of  our  hearts,  and 


THE  REVELATIONS  OF  QFLIfiF   ioi 

»      » »  >     .  >  '•''''>  • ,  >  «   > 

made  him  the  servitor  of  our  desires,  but  no' ' 
longer  the  lord  of  our  behaviour  and  the 
spirit  of  our  lives.  And  now  as  we  gaze  on 
these  things  across  the  gulf  of  the  irreparable, 
we  see  our  sin  and  how  it  came  to  pass ;  how 
we  were  unkind  not  in  the  things  we  did  but 
in  those  we  failed  to  do  ;  how,  without  being 
cruel,  our  denied  response  to  hearts  that 
craved  our  tenderness  became  a  more  subtle 
cruelty  than  angry  word  or  hasty  blow  ;  how 
with  every  duty  accurately  measured  and  ful- 
filled, yet  love  evaporated  in  the  cold  and 
cheerless  atmosphere  of  repression  and  aloof- 
ness with  which  we  clothed  ourselves ;  and 
then  the  significance  of  Christ's  teaching 
comes  home  to  us,  for  we  know  too  late,  that 
kindness  is  more  than  righteousness,  and 
tenderness  more  than  duty,  and  that  to  have 
loved  with  all  our  hearts  is  the  only  fulfilling 
of  the  law  which  heaven  approves.  None, 
bowed  beside  the  newly  dead,  ever  regretted 
that  they  had  loved  too  well ;  millions  have 
wept  the  bitterest  tears  known  to  mortals  be- 
cause they  loved  too  little,  and  wronged  by 


i<W    '  the:  empire  of  love 

' r' -their  poverty  of  love  the  sacred  human  pres- 
ences now  withdrawn  forever  from  their  vision. 
But  there  are  other  and  more  joyous  ways 
of  learning  the  truth  of  Christ's  teaching, 
ways  that  are  accessible  to  all  of  us.  The 
best  and  most  joyous  way  of  all  is  to  make 
experiment  of  it.  Here  is  a  law  of  life  which 
to  the  sophisticated  mind  seems  impossible, 
impracticable,  and  even  absurd.  No  amount 
of  argument  will  convince  us  that  we  can  find 
in  love  a  sufficient  rule  of  life,  or  that  "  to  re- 
nounce joy  for  our  fellow's  sake  is  joy  beyond 
joy."  How  are  we  to  be  convinced  ?  Only 
by  making  the  experiment,  for  we  really  be- 
lieve only  that  which  we  practice.  "  I  wish  I 
had  your  creed,  then  I  would  live  your  life," 
said  a  seeker  after  truth  to  Pascal,  the  great 
French  thinker.  "  Live  my  life,  and  you  will 
soon  have  my  creed,"  was  the  swift  reply. 
The  solution  of  all  difficulties  of  faith  lies  in 
Pascal's  answer,  which  is  after  all  but  a  vari- 
ant of  Christ's  greater  saying,  "  He  that  will- 
eth  to  do  the  will  of  God,  shall  know  the  doc- 
trine."    Is  not  the  whole  reason  why,  for  so 


THE  REVELATIONS  OF  GRIEF   103 

many  of  us,  the  religion  of  Christ  which  we 
profess  has  so  little  in  it  to  content  us,  simply 
this,  that  we  have  never  heartily  and  honestly 
tried  to  practice  it?  We  have  accepted 
Christ's  religion  indeed,  as  one  which  upon  the 
whole  should  be  accepted  by  virtuous  men,  or 
as  one  which  has  sufficient  superiorities  to  cer- 
tain other  forms  of  religion  to  turn  the  scale 
of  our  intellectual  hesitation,  and  win  from  us 
reluctant  acquiescence.  But  have  we  ac- 
cepted it  as  the  only  authoritative  rule  of 
practice?  Have  we  ever  tried  to  live  one 
day  of  our  life  so  that  it  should  resemble  one 
of  the  days  of  the  Son  of  Man  ?  Knowing 
what  He  thought  and  did,  and  how  He  felt, 
have  we  ever  tried  to  think  and  act  and  feel 
as  He  did — and  if  we  have  not,  what  wonder 
that  our  religion,  being  wholly  theoretical, 
appears  to  us  tainted  with  unreality,  a  thin- 
spun  web  of  barren,  fragile  idealism  which 
leaves  us  querulous  and  discontented  ? 

Such  a  sense  of  discontent  should  be  for 
us,  as  it  really  is,  the  signal  of  some  deep 
mistake  in   our  conception  of  religion.     It 


104         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

should  at  least  cause  us  alarm,  for  what  can 
be  more  alarming  than  that  we  should  be 
haunted  with  a  sense  of  unreality  in  religion, 
yet  still  profess  religion  for  reasons  which 
leave  the  heart  indifferent  and  barely  serve  to 
satisfy  the  intellect  ?  And  what  can  produce 
a  keener  torture  in  a  sincere  mind  than  this 
eternal  suspicion  of  unreality  in  a  religion 
whose  conventional  authority  is  acknowl- 
edged and  accepted  ? 

I  am  convinced  that  these  feelings  are  gen- 
eral among  great  multitudes  of  the  more 
thoughtful  and  intelligent  adherents  of  Chris- 
tianity. Religion  rests  with  them  upon  a 
certain  intellectual  acquiescence,  or  upon  the 
equipoise  of  rational  probabilities,  or  on  the 
compromise  of  intellectual  hesitations.  Their 
tastes  are  gratified  by  the  normal  forms  of 
worship,  and  their  sentiments  are  softly  stirred 
and  stimulated.  But  when  the  voice  of  the 
orator  dies  upon  the  porches  of  the  ear,  and 
the  music  of  the  Church  is  silent,  and  the 
seduction  of  splendid  ceremonial  is  forgotten, 
there  remains  the  uneasy  sense  that  between 


THE  REVELATIONS  OF  GRIEF   105 

all  this  and  the  actual  Carpenter-Redeemer 
there  is  a  wide  gulf  fixed  ;  that  Jesus  scarcely 
lived  and  died  to  produce  only  such  results 
as  these ;  that  there  must  be  some  other 
method  of  interpreting  His  life,  much  simpler, 
much  truer,  and  much  more  satisfying.  Is  it 
wonderful  that  among  such  men  the  current 
forms  of  Christianity  excite  no  enthusiasm, 
and  that  the  bonds  of  their  attachment  to  it 
are  lax  and  easily  dissolved  ?  And  what  is 
felt  by  these  men  within  the  Church  is  felt 
with  much  greater  strength  by  multitudes  of 
sincere  men  outside  the  Church,  who  do  not 
hesitate  to  express  their  feeling  and  to  pro- 
nounce current  Christianity  a  burlesque  and 
tragic  travesty  upon  the  real  religion  of  the 
Nazarene. 

But  the  moment  we  do  begin  to  live,  how- 
ever inefficiently,  as  Jesus  lived,  the  sublime 
reality  of  His  religion  is  revealed  to  us.  We 
do  actually  find  that  in  the  postponement  of 
our  own  desires  for  the  sake  of  others ;  in  the 
abandonment  of  our  own  apparently  legiti- 
mate ambitions  for  the  service  of  the  poor  ;  in 


106         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

the  patient  endurance  of  affront  and  injury ; 
in  the  forgiveness  of  those  whose  wrong  seems 
inexpiable ;  in  the  daily  exercise  of  love  that 
"  seeketh  not  itself  to  please,"  but  hopeth  all 
things,  and  believeth  all  things, — there  is  a 
joy  beyond  joy,  and  an  exceeding  great  re- 
ward. We  do  actually  find  that  to  forgive 
our  brother  freely  is  better  both  for  him  and 
us  than  to  judge  him  harshly,  and  the  wisdom 
of  Jesus  is  thus  justified  in  its  moral  and  social 
efficacy.  We  do  actually  find  that  in  ceas- 
ing to  live  by  worldly  maxims  and  by  living 
instead  according  to  the  maxims  of  Jesus,  we 
have  attained  a  form  of  happiness  so  incredi- 
bly sweet  and  pure  that  the  world  holds  noth- 
ing that  resembles  it,  and  nothing  that  we 
would  exchange  for  it.  For  this  is  now  our 
great  reward,  that  peace  attends  our  footsteps, 
and  that  our  hearts  are  no  longer  vexed  with 
the  perturbations  of  vanity  and  self-love,  of 
envy  and  revenge.  We  find  human  nature 
answering  to  our  touch  even  as  it  answered 
to  the  touch  of  Jesus,  and  revealing  to  us  all 
its  best  and  purest  treasure.     We  find  the 


THE  REVELATIONS  OF  GRIEF   107 

very  natures  we  thought  intractable  and  des- 
titute of  all  affinity  with  ours,  brought  near 
our  own ;  the  very  men  and  women  we 
thought  wholly  alien  to  us  suddenly  made 
lovable,  and  full  of  qualities  that  claim  our 
love.  And  as  we  thus  humbly  follow  in  the 
steps  of  Jesus,  trying  to  live  each  day  as  He 
lived,  we  know  that  sublimest  joy  of  all — we 
feel  Jesus  acting  once  more  through  our  ac- 
tions, and  we  see  in  the  eyes  that  meet  our 
own  the  same  look  that  Jesus  saw  in  the  eyes 
of  those  whom  He  had  cured  of  misery  and 
redeemed  from  sin. 


A  CONFESSION 


THE  NOBLEST  GRACE 

'  Tts  something,  when  the  day  draws  to  its  close, 
To  say,  "  Tho'  I  have  borne  a  burdened  mind, 
Have  tasted  neither  pleasure  nor  repose, 
Yet  this  remains — to  all  men,  friends  or  foes, 
1  have  been  kind." 

9  Tis  something,  when  I  hear  Death's  awful  tread 
Upon  the  stair,  that  his  swift  eye  shall  find 
Upon  my  heart  old  wounds  that  often  bled 

For  others,  but  no  heart  I  injured — 
I  have  been  kind. 

Praise  will  not  comfort  me  when  I  am  dead ; 
Yet  should  one  come,  by  tenderness  inclined, 
My  heart  would  know  if  he  stooped  o'er  my  bed 
And  kissed  my  lips  for  memory,  and  said 
"  This  man  was  kind." 

0  Lord,  when  from  Thy  throne  Thou  judgest  me, 
Remember,  tho'  I  was  perverse  and  blind, 

My  heart  went  out  to  men  in  misery, 

1  gave  what  little  store  I  had  to  Thee, 

My  life  was  kind. 


X 

A  CONFESSION 

IN  speaking  thus  I  do  but  speak  of  those 
things  which  have  been  revealed  to  me 
in  my  own  experience.  For  many  years 
I  preached  the  truths  of  Christianity  with  a 
real  sincerity,  but  with  a  fluctuating  sense  of 
their  authority  and  value.  Sometimes  their 
authority  seemed  supreme,  and  then  I  trod 
on  bright  clouds  high  above  the  world ;  at 
other  times  they  appeared  to  crumble  at  my 
touch,  and  then  I  walked  in  darkness.  One 
thing  I  saw  at  intervals,  and  at  last  with  com- 
plete and  agonized  distinctness,  that  however 
I  preached  these  truths,  they  had  little  visible 
effect  upon  the  lives  of  others.  Those  to 
whom  I  preached  lived  after  all  much  as 
other  people  lived.  I  did  not  find  them  more 
magnanimous  than  the  ordinary  men  and 
women  of  the  world,  nor  less  liable  to  take 

offense,  to  utter  harsh  words,  to  indulge  in  re- 
iii 


ii2         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

sentments,  and  to  retaliate  on  those  who  in- 
jured them.  I  did  not  find  that  they  loved 
humanity  any  better  than  their  fellows ;  like 
all  mankind  they  loved  those  who  loved 
them,  and  had  domestic  virtues  and  affections, 
but  little  more.  It  was  impossible  to  say  that 
Christianity  had  produced  in  them  any  type 
of  character  wholly  and  radically  different 
from  that  which  might  be  found  in  multi- 
tudes of  men  and  women  who  made  no  pre- 
tense of  Christian  sentiment.  Christianity 
had  no  doubt  imposed  upon  them  many 
valuable  restraints,  so  that  without  it  they 
might  have  been  worse  men  and  women,  but 
this  was  a  merely  negative  result.  Where 
was  the  spectacle  of  a  character  composed  of 
new  qualities,  a  life  wholly  governed  by  novel 
impulses  and  principles?  I  could  not  find 
such  a  life ;  nor  ought  I  to  have  been  sur- 
prised ;  for  I  could  not  find  it  in  myself.  I 
also  lived  much  as  other  people  did,  except 
that  I  had  a  higher  theory  of  conduct.  Put 
to  the  test,  I  also  showed  resentment  and  was 
moved  with  the  spirit  of  retaliation  towards 


A  CONFESSION  113 

those  who  wronged  me.  Nor,  save  as  a 
matter  of  theory  and  sentiment,  did  I  love 
my  fellows  any  better  than  the  average  of 
mankind.  I  sought  those  who  were  congen- 
ial to  me,  and  had  no  pleasure  in  the  com- 
pany of  the  common  and  the  ignorant.  I 
liked  clever  people.  I  gave  them  my  best, 
but  I  had  nothing  to  bestow  upon  the  dull 
and  stupid.  How  many  times  have  I  borne 
the  society  of  inferior  people  with  ungra- 
cious tolerance,  and  hastened  from  them  with 
undisguised  relief?  How  often  when  deal- 
ing with  the  poor  and  ignorant  in  the  exer- 
cise of  conventional  philanthropy,  have  I 
been  careful  to  preserve  the  sense  of  a  great 
gulf  that  yawned  between  me  and  them  ? 
And  what  was  my  daily  life  after  all  but  a 
life  existing  for  its  own  purposes,  as  most 
other  men's  lives  were  ;  and  what  credit  could 
I  take  for  the  fact  that  the  nature  of  those 
purposes  was  a  trifle  more  consonant  with 
what  the  world  calls  high  ideals  than  theirs  ? 
So  the  years  went  on,  and  the  sense  of  un- 
reality in  my  teaching  grew  steadily  more  in- 


ii4         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

tense  and  intolerable.  I  saw  myself  continu- 
ally expending  all  the  forces  of  my  mind  on 
theories  which  left  me  and  my  hearers  alike 
unchanged  in  the  essential  characteristics  of 
our  lives.  I  felt  myself,  like  St.  Augustine, 
but  a  "  seller  of  rhetoric."  I  was  inculcating  a 
method  of  life  which  I  myself  did  not  obey,  or 
obeyed  only  in  those  respects  that  caused  me 
neither  sacrifice  nor  inconvenience.  In  order 
to  continue  such  labours  at  all  various  forms 
of  excuse  and  self-deception  were  required. 
Thus  I  flattered  myself  that  I  was  at  least 
maintaining  the  authority  of  morals.  I  did 
not  perceive  that  morals  are  of  no  value  to 
the  world  until  vitalized  by  emotion.  At 
other  times  I  preached  with  strenuous  zeal 
the  superiority  of  the  Christian  religion,  and 
dilated  on  its  early  triumphs.  This  pleased 
my  hearers,  for  it  always  flatters  men  to  find 
themselves  upon  the  winning  side.  What  I 
wonder  at  now  is  that  they  did  not  per- 
ceive that  my  zeal  to  prove  Christianity 
true  was  exactly  proportioned  to  my  fear 
that    it    was    false.     Men    do    not  seek   to 


A  CONFESSION  115 

prove  that  of  which  they  are  assured. 
Jesus  never  sought  to  prove  the  existence  of 
a  God  because  He  was  assured  of  it ;  He 
simply  asserted  and  commanded.  In  my 
heart  of  hearts  I  knew  that  I  was  not  sure. 
But  I  did  not  easily  discover  the  reason  of  my 
uncertainty.  I  supposed  the  source  to  be  the 
destructive  criticism  of  the  Gospels  which  had 
reduced  Jesus  Himself  to  a  probability.  In 
my  private  thoughts  I  argued  that  it  was  no 
longer  possible  to  feel  the  intense  reality  of 
Christ.  Francis  might  feel  it,  Catherine 
might  feel  it,  because  they  lived  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  poetry,  unchilled  by  criticism.  I 
could  never  feel  as  they  felt  because  I  could 
not  transport  myself  into  their  atmosphere. 
Yet  as  often  as  I  turned  to  these  great  lives, 
something  thrilled  within  me,  some  living  re- 
sponsive fibre,  so  that  I  knew  that  I  was  not 
after  all  quite  alien  to  them.  Could  it  be 
that  there  was  that  in  me  that  made  me,  or 
could  make  me,  of  their  company  ?  But  how 
could  I  attain  to  their  faith?  What  could 
give  back  to  a  modern  man,  tortured  by  a 


n6         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

thousand  perplexities  of  knowledge  of  which 
they  never  dreamed,  the  reality  of  Christ 
which  they  possessed  ?  And  then  the  answer 
came — not  suddenly,  but  as  a  still  small 
voice  slowly  growing  louder,  more  positive, 
more  intense — Live  the  Life.  Try  to  do  some 
at  least  of  the  things  that  Jesus  did.  Seek 
through  experience  what  can  never  come 
through  ratiocination.  Be  a  Francis  ;  then  it 
may  be  thou  shalt  think  like  him,  and  know 
Jesus  as  he  knew  Him.  Live  the  life — there 
is  no  other  way. 

Simple  and  far  from  novel  as  the  answer 
seems  yet  it  came  to  me  with  the  authority 
of  a  revelation.  It  illumined  the  entire  cir- 
cumference of  life.  I  could  no  longer 
hesitate :  Jesus  had  never  spoken  from  the 
Syrian  heavens  more  surely  to  the  heart  of 
Saul  of  Tarsus  than  He  had  to  me.  And  in 
the  moment  that  He  spoke,  I  also,  like  Saul, 
found  all  my  feelings  altered,  altered  in- 
credibly, miraculously,  so  that  I  scarcely 
recognized  myself.  I  no  longer  stood  aloof 
from  men,  and  found  pleasure  in  intellectual 


A  CONFESSION  117 

superiority ;  I  was  willing  to  "  become  a  fool 
for  Christ's  sake  "  if  by  any  means  I  might 
save  some.  I  issued  a  card  of  invitation  to 
the  services  of  my  Church  with  this  motto  of 
St.  Paul's  upon  it,  which  I  now  felt  was  mine. 
I  had  had  for  years  feelings  of  resentment 
towards  one  who  I  thought  had  wronged 
me ;  those  feelings  were  now  dead.  In  an- 
other case  I  had  been  harsh  and  unforgiving 
under  great  provocation ;  but  when  I  met 
after  a  long  interval  of  time,  the  one  who 
had  injured  me,  my  heart  had  only  love  and 
pity  for  him.  I  sought  out  the  drunkard 
and  the  harlot,  and,  when  I  found  them,  all 
repulsion  perished  in  the  flow  of  infinite 
compassion  which  I  felt.  I  prayed  with 
fallen  women,  sought  them  in  their  miserable 
abodes,  fought  with  them  for  their  own  souls, 
and  O  exquisite  moment! — I  saw  the  soul 
awake  in  them,  I  saw  in  their  tear-filled  eyes 
the  look  that  Jesus  saw  in  the  eyes  of 
Magdalene.  On  my  last  Sabbath  in  London 
before  leaving  for  America,  one  of  these 
rescued    girls,   now  as    pure  of    look  and 


n8         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

manner  as  those  most  sweetly  nurtured, 
called  at  my  house  to  give  my  daughter  a 
little  present  bought  with  the  first  money  she 
had  earned  by  honest  toil  in  many  years. 
On  the  day  we  sailed  another  said  a  special 
mass  for  us,  and  held  the  day  sacred  for 
prayer,  in  the  convent  where  her  bruised  life 
had  been  nursed  back  to  moral  beauty. 
Love  had  triumphed  in  them,  and  I  had 
brought  them  that  love.  I  had  lived  the 
life,  I  had  tried  to  do  something  that  Jesus 
did,  and  behold  Jesus  had  come  back  to  me, 
and  I  knew  His  presence  with  me  even  as 
Francis  knew  it  when  he  washed  the  leper's 
sores,  and  Catherine  when  she  gathered  to  her 
bosom  the  murderer's  guilty  head,  drew  from 
him  the  confession  of  his  sin,  and  whispered 
to  him  softly  of  the  Lamb  of  God. 

There  is  no  sense  of  unreality  in  religion 
now  for  me.  There  are  no  weary  uncer- 
tainties, no  melancholy  sense  of  beating  the 
air  in  what  I  teach.  He  who  will  try  to  live 
the  life  of  Jesus  for  a  single  day,  and  in  such 
few  particulars  as  may  lie  within  his  scope, 


A  CONFESSION  119 

will  at  once  realize  the  presence  of  Jesus  with 
him.  In  the  practice  of  love  comes  the 
manifestation  of  the  Lover,  the  drawing  of 
the  soul  into  the  bosom  of  that  Christ  who 
was  the  very  love  of  God,  and  the  exchange 
of  our  poor  proud  carnal  heart  for  the  tender 
heart  that  yearned  over  Magdalene,  was 
moved  with  compassion  for  the  people,  and 
broke  upon  the  Cross. 


A  LOVER  OF  MEN 


THE  CRADLE  CROSS 

"  What  shall  I  ask  for  Thee,  my  child?  " 
Said  Mary  Mother,  stooping  down 
Above  the  Babe  all  undefiled. 

"  O  let  Him  wear  a  kingly  crown." 

From  wise  men's  gifts  she  wrought  the  crown, 
The  robe  inwove  with  many  a  gem ; 

Beside  the  Babe  she  laid  them  down. 

He  wept,  and  would  have  none  of  them. 

"  What  shall  1  get  for  Thee,  my  Child?  " 
Unto  the  door  she  slowly  went, 
And  wove  a  crown  of  thorn-boughs  wild; 
He  took  it  up,  and  was  content. 

Upon  the  floor  she  gathered  wood, 
And  made  a  little  Cross  for  Him  ; 

The  Child  smiled  for  He  understood, 

And  Mary  watched  with  eyes  grown  dim. 

"  Since  these  He  doth  prefer  to  gold," 
She  sadly  said,  "  Let  it  be  so ; 
He  sees  what  I  cannot  behold, 

He  knows  what  I  can  never  know.9* 

That  night  the  eyes  of  Mary  saw 

A  Cross  of  stars  set  in  the  sky, 
Which  after  it  the  heavens  did  draw, 

And  this  to  her  was  God 's  reply. 


XI 

A  LOVER   OF  MEN 

WHEN  I  recollect  these  experiences, 
and  the  almost  breathless  sense 
of  joy  which  accompanied  them, 
I  can  only  marvel  that  I  lived  so  many  years 
without  discovering  the  path  that  led  to  them. 
The  path  was  quite  plain,  and  nothing  con- 
cealed it  from  me  but  my  own  pride.  I  could 
even  see  with  distinctness  those  who  trod  it, 
not  only  the  saints  of  far-off  days,  but  men 
like  Father  Dolling,  and  women  whose  pale 
intense  faces  met  mine  from  beneath  the  quaint 
ugliness  of  Salvation  Army  bonnets.  These 
soldiers  of  the  League  of  Service  moved 
everywhere  around  me  in  the  incessant  pro- 
cessions of  a  tireless  love.  I  knew  their 
works,  and  there  was  no  hour  when  my  heart 
did  not  go  out  to  them  in  sympathy.  Why 
was  it  that  I  was  only  sympathizer  and  spec- 
tator, never  comrade  ? 
123 


124         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

Partly  through  a  kind  of  mischievous  hu- 
mility which  was  really  pride.  They  could 
do  these  things ;  I  could  not,  nor  were  they 
required  of  me.  It  needed  special  gifts  for 
such  a  work,  and  I  had  not  these  gifts. 
Besides,  had  I  not  my  own  work?  Was  it 
not  as  important  to  educate  persons  of 
some  culture  and  social  position  in  a  knowl- 
edge of  Christian  truth  as  to  redeem  lost 
people  from  the  hell  of  their  misdoing? 
Certainly  it  was  easier  and  pleasanter.  I 
found  in  it  that  most  subtle  of  all  gratifica- 
tions, the  sense  of  ability  efficiently  applied, 
and  winning  praise  by  its  exertion.  There 
was  no  one  who  wished  me  to  live  in  any 
other  way  than  that  in  which  I  lived.  Those 
to  whom  I  ministered  were  satisfied  with  me, 
and  had  I  told  them  that  I  wished  to  do  the 
sort  of  things  that  Salvation  Army  people  did 
among  the  slums,  they  would  have  been 
shocked,  and  would  certainly  have  dissuaded 
me.  And  so  to  this  mischievous  humility 
which  assured  me  that  I  had  no  fitness  for 
the  kind  of  life  which  I  knew  was  the  life  of 


A  LOVER  OF  MEN  125 

the  saints  in  every  age,  there  was  added  the 
dull  pressure  of  convention.  Why  should  I 
do  what  no  one  expected  me  to  do  ?  Why 
could  I  not  be  content  to  fulfill  the  common 
standard  approved  by  the  average  conception 
of  Christianity  ? 

I  can  see  now  how  foolish  and  how  wrong 
these  thoughts  were.  I  saw  it  even  then  at 
intervals.  Again  and  again,  like  a  torturing 
flash  of  fire,  there  ran  through  me  illumining 
agonized  dissatisfactions  with  myself,  my 
work,  my  whole  position.  And  again  and 
again  I  let  the  flame  die  down,  knowing  not 
that  the  Son  of  Man  had  walked  amid  the 
fire.  Nay  more,  I  deliberately  smothered  the 
holy  fire,  being  in  part  fearful  of  it,  and  of 
what  its  consequence  might  be,  if  once  it 
were  allowed  to  triumph.  For  I  knew  that 
if  I  followed  these  strange  impulses  my  whole 
life  must  be  changed,  and  I  did  not  want  it 
changed.  I  did  not  want  to  give  up  the  ease 
of  an  assured  position,  the  calm  of  studious 
hours,  the  tasks  which  flattered  my  ability. 
I  did  not  want  to  face  what  I  knew  must  hap- 


126         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

pen,  the  estrangement  of  old  friendships,  the 
rupture  of  accustomed  forms  of  life.  Besides, 
I  might  be  wholly  wrong.  I  might  have  no 
real  fitness  for  the  tasks  I  contemplated ; 
saints,  like  poets,  were  born,  not  made.  No 
one  who  knew  me  would  have  believed  me 
better  fitted  for  any  kind  of  life  than  that  I 
lived.  I  had  no  friend  who  did  not  think  my 
present  life  adequate  and  satisfactory,  and 
many  envied  me  for  the  good  fortune  that 
had  given  me  just  the  kind  of  sphere  which 
seemed  best  suited  to  me. 

But  now  I  see,  as  I  look  back,  that  at  the 
root  of  all  my  inconsistency  there  lay  this  one 
thing,  I  was  not  a  lover  of  my  kind.  I  did 
not  love  men  as  men,  humanity  as  humanity, 
as  Jesus  did.  Of  course  I  loved  individuals, 
and  even  groups  of  men  and  classes  of  men, 
who  could  understand  my  thoughts,  recog- 
nize my  qualities,  and  repay  my  affection 
with  affection.  But  to  feel  love  for  men  as 
men ;  for  those  whose  vulgarity  distressed 
me,  whose  ignorance  offended  me,  whose 
method  of  life   repelled   me;    love   for  the 


A  LOVER  OF  MEN  127 

drudge,  the  helot,  the  social  pariah ;  love  for 
people  who  had  no  beauty  that  men  should 
desire  them,  nor  any  grace  of  mind  or  per- 
son, nor  any  quality  that  kindled  interest ; 
love  for  the  dull  average,  with  their  painful 
limitations  of  mind  and  ideal,  the  gray  armies 
of  featureless  grief,  whose  very  sorrows  had 
nothing  picturesque  in  them  and  no  tragic 
fascination — no,  for  these  I  had  no  real  love. 
I  had  a  deep  commiseration,  but  it  was  that 
kind  of  romantic  or  aesthetic  pity  which  be- 
gins and  ends  in  its  own  expression.  I  did 
not  know  them  by  actual  contact ;  I  could 
not  honestly  say  that  I  wished  to  know  them. 
And  then  the  thought  came  to  me,  and  grew 
in  me,  that  Jesus  did  love  these  people  with 
an  unconquerable  passion.  The  multitudes 
to  whom  He  preached  were  composed,  as  all 
multitudes  are,  of  quite  ordinary  immemora- 
ble  people.  He  also,  to  the  eyes  of  those  who 
saw  Him  in  the  peasant  garb  of  Galilee,  and 
judged  only  by  outward  appearance,  was  a 
common  man.  And  so  it  would  appear  that 
if  I  did  not  love  men  after  the  fashion  in  which 


128         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

Jesus  loved  them,  it  was  very  unlikely  that  I 
should  love  Jesus  Christ  Himself  if  He  once 
more  appeared  in  the  habit  in  which  men  saw 
Him  long  ago  in  Galilee.  A  Jesus,  footsore, 
weary,  travel-stained,  wearing  the  raiment 
of  a  village  carpenter,  speaking  with  the  ac- 
cent of  an  unconsidered  province,  surrounded 
by  a  rabble  of  rude  fishermen,  among  whom 
mingled  many  persons  of  doubtful  character 
— how  should  I  regard  Him?  Should  I  dis- 
cern the  Light  and  Life  of  men  beneath  His 
gray  disguise  of  circumstance?  Should  1 
have  left  my  books,  my  studious  calm,  my 
pleasant  and  sufficing  tasks,  to  listen  to  One 
who  seemed  so  little  likely  to  instruct  me  ? 
Would  not  the  same  spirit  of  disdain  which 
made  me  think  lightly  and  even  scornfully  of 
persons  whose  lives  had  no  resemblance  to 
my  own,  have  made  me  disdainful  of  the 
Man  of  Nazareth  ?  I  knew  the  answer  and 
I  quailed  before  it.  I  saw  that  the  temper  of 
my  mind  was  the  temper  of  the  Pharisee,  and 
had  I  lived  two  thousand  years  ago  in  Jerusa- 
lem or  Galilee,  I  should  have  rejected  Jesus 


A  LOVER  OF  MEN  129 

even  as  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  rejected 
Him. 

And  I  should  have  rejected  Him  for  the 
same  reason,  because  I  had  no  truly  generous 
love  of  man  as  man.  I  should  have  been  no 
better  able  to  perceive  than  they  that  it  had 
pleased  God  to  clothe  Himself  in  the  flesh  of 
one  who  united  in  His  own  person  all  those 
disabilities  which  incur  the  scorn  of  those 
who  account  themselves  superior  and  culti- 
vated, such  as  lowly  and  doubtful  origin, 
poverty  and  the  lack  of  liberal  education,  and 
methods  of  life  which  outraged  social  use  and 
custom.  Did  not  Jesus  demand  for  the  un- 
derstanding of  Himself  precisely  that  temper 
which  enabled  Him  to  understand  others,  the 
temper  which  discerns  the  soul  beneath  all 
disguise  of  circumstance  ?  He  discerned  the 
splendid  and  divine  beneath  the  sordid.  He 
saw  beneath  the  drift  of  sin  the  buried  mag- 
nificence of  human  nature  as  men  discover 
the  hidden  temple  beneath  the  sand-drift  of 
the  desert.  He  was  able  to  love  all  men  be- 
cause all   men   were  to   Him   living  souls. 


130         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

And  His  own  manifestation  to  the  world  was 
such  that  only  those  who  had  this  temper 
could  at  all  perceive  His  divine  significance. 
The  Pharisee  could  not  see  that  significance 
simply  because  he  was  not  accustomed  to  see 
men  as  men.  He  had  no  real  interest  in  man 
as  man.  He  was  not  a  lover  of  his  kind. 
Hence,  when  the  Son  of  Man  came  out  of 
Nazareth,  the  Pharisee  was  too  careless  or  too 
supercilious  to  regard  Him  with  interest. 
The  divine  wonder  passed  him  by ;  all  he  saw 
was  a  wandering  fanatic  with  no  place  to  lay 
His  head.  He  could  not  pierce  the  disguise 
of  circumstance,  and  bow  in  love  and  awe 
before  the  soul  of  Jesus  because  he  was  not 
accustomed  to  discern  the  soul  in  common 
people.  And  so  there  came  home  to  me  the 
awful  truth  that  I  was  not  a  lover  of  my  kind. 
I  was  even  as  the  Pharisees,  and  in  denying 
my  regard  and  love  to  the  lowliest  of  men 
and  women  I  was  rejecting  Jesus  Christ. 
That  which  had  seemed  to  me  a  strange  ex- 
aggeration or  an  enigmatic  sentence,  now 
became  a  rational  principle,  a  saying  that  had 


A  LOVER  OF  MEN  131 

its  root  in  the  deep  truth  and  reality  of  things ; 
inasmuch  as  I  showed  not  love  to  the  least  of 
these,  my  fellows,  I  denied  my  love  to  Jesus 
Christ  Himself. 


THE  LAW  OF  COMPASSION 


THE  TRUE  MUSIC 

Not  for  the  things  we  sing  or  say 

He  listens,  who  beside  us  stoops  ; 
Too  worn  the  feet ,  too  hard  the  way, 

Too  sore  the  Cross  wherewith  He  droops, 
And  much  too  great  the  need  that  cries 
From  those  bruised  eyelids  and  dim  eyes. 

He  waits  the  water  from  the  spring 
Of  kindness  in  the  human  heart, 
The  touch  of  hands,  whose  touches  bring 
A  coolness  to  the  wounds  that  smart, 
The  warm  tears  falling  on  His  feet 
Than  precious  ointment  much  more  sweet, 

O  Lord,  the  way  is  hard  and  steep, 

Help  me  to  walk  that  way  with  Thee, 
To  watch  with  Thee,  and  not  to  sleep 
Heedless  of  Thy  Gethsemane, 

Till  love  becomes  my  worshipping, 
Who  have  no  other  gift  to  bring. 

It  is  no  hour  for  angel-harp, 

The  sky  is  dark,  the  Cross  is  near, 
The  agony  of  Death  is  sharp, 

The  scorn  of  men  upbraids  Thine  ear. 
Fain  would  I  leave  all  empty  creeds, 
And  make  a  music  of  my  deeds. 


XII 

THE  LAW  OF  COMPASSION 

THUS  to  love  our  fellow  men  is  a  dif- 
ficult business, — there  is  none 
harder.  It  is  so  difficult  that  only 
a  few  in  any  age  succeed  on  so  conspicuous 
a  scale  as  to  attract  prolonged  attention. 
Yet  the  secret  of  success  is  not  obscure ;  it 
lies  in  that  temper  of  compassion  which  is 
the  most  beautiful  of  all  features  in  the  char- 
acter of  Jesus.  When  He  looked  upon  the 
multitude  He  was  "  moved  with  compas- 
sion " — never  was  there  more  illuminative 
sentence.  It  reveals  an  attitude  of  mind  ab- 
solutely original.  For  the  general  attitude 
towards  the  multitude  in  Christ's  day  was 
harsh  and  scornful.  All  the  splendid  intel- 
lectualism  of  Greece  existed  for  the  favoured 
few  ;  beneath  that  glittering  edifice  of  art  and 
letters  lay  the  dungeons  of  the  slave.  It  was 
the  same  with  Rome;  it  was  an  empire  of 
i35 


i36         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

privilege,  in  which  the  multitude  had  no 
part.  Jewish  society  was  built  after  the  same 
pattern,  except  that  with  the  Pharisee  the 
sense  of  religious  superiority  bred  a  kind  of 
arrogance  much  more  bitter  than  that  which 
is  the  fruit  of  intellectual  or  social  exclusive- 
ness.  With  men  of  this  temper  the  call  to 
love  all  men  as  fellows  could  only  provoke 
anger  and  derision.  What  possible  relation 
could  exist  between  an  Athenian  philosopher 
and  a  helot,  a  Roman  noble  and  a  slave,  a 
Pharisee  proud  of  his  meticulous  knowledge 
of  the  law,  and  the  common  people  who 
were  unlettered  ?  The  gulf  that  yawned  be- 
tween such  lives  was  as  wide  as  that  which 
separates  the  scholar,  the  artist,  or  the  aristo- 
crat of  modern  Europe  from  the  pale  toiler 
of  a  New  York  sweating-room,  or  the  coal 
carriers  of  Zanzibar  or  Aden.  When  Jesus 
bade  the  young  ruler  sell  all  that  he  had  and 
give  it  to  the  poor,  He  proposed  an  entirely 
unthinkable  condition  of  discipleship.  He 
bade  him  discard  all  the  privileges  of  his  or- 
der.    He  proposed  instead  real  comradeship 


THE  LAW  OF  COMPASSION     137 

with  the  poor,  He  Himself  being  poor.  For 
two  thousand  years  the  pulpit  has  denounced 
the  young  ruler  for  not  doing  what  no  one 
even  now  would  think  of  doing — not  even 
those  who  are  most  eloquent  in  denunciation. 
We  may  waive  the  question  of  whether  the 
advice  of  Jesus  to  the  young  ruler  was  meant 
to  be  of  particular  or  universal  application, 
but  we  cannot  ignore  the  new  law  of  life 
which  Jesus  formulated  when  He  made  com- 
passion the  supreme  social  virtue.  For  it  is 
only  through  compassion  that  we  learn  to 
understand  those  who  differ  from  us  in  social 
station  or  temperament,  and  can  at  all  come 
to  love  them.  Let  me  examine  my  own 
natural  tendencies,  and  I  am  soon  made 
aware  of  how  impossible  it  is  to  love  all  my 
fellow  men.  I  commence  my  life,  for  instance, 
under  conditions  which  permit  me  to  see 
only  a  small  section  of  society,  which  I 
imagine  to  be  the  world  itself.  I  know  noth- 
ing, and  am  told  nothing,  of  those  whose 
lives  do  not  lie  in  the  direct  line  of  my  lim- 
ited vision.     The  process  of  education    re- 


138         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

moves  me  at  each  stage  further  from  the 
likelihood  of  knowing  them.  I  acquire 
ideals,  habits,  and  manners  of  which  they  are 
destitute.  I  come  to  regard  an  acquaintance 
with  various  forms  of  knowledge  as  essential 
to  life,  and  I  am  naturally  disdainful  of  those 
who  do  not  possess  this  knowledge.  In  the 
same  way  I  regard  a  certain  code  of  manners 
as  binding,  and  the  lack  of  this  code  of  man- 
ners in  others  as  an  outrage.  My  very 
thoughts  have  their  own  dialect,  and  I  am 
totally  unacquainted  with  the  dialect  of  those 
whose  thoughts  differ  from  my  own.  Thus 
with  the  growth  of  my  culture  there  is  the 
equal  growth  of  prejudice  ;  with  the  enjoy- 
ment of  my  privilege,  a  tacit  rejection  and 
repudiation  of  the  unprivileged. 

How  then  am  I  ever  to  find  myself  in  any 
relation  of  affection  towards  these  human 
creatures  from  whom  I  am  alienated  by  the 
nature  of  my  education  ?  If,  by  any  chance, 
I  come  in  contact  with  them,  it  is  certain  that 
they  will  arouse  in  me  repugnance  and  per- 
haps disgust.     I  shall  find  them  coarse,  crude, 


THE  LAW  OF  COMPASSION     139 

and  ignorant ;  their  methods  of  speech  will 
grate  upon  me,  their  manners  will  repel  me  ; 
they  will  be  as  truly  foreign  to  me  as  the 
natives  of  New  Guinea,  and  their  total  in- 
capacity to  share  the  thoughts  which  com- 
pose my  own  inner  life  will  be  scarcely  less 
complete.  It  is  a  truly  humiliating  thing  to 
admit  that  differences  of  nationality  separate 
men  less  effectually  than  disparity  of  man- 
ners. If  I  am  at  all  fastidious  I  am  more 
likely  to  be  repelled  by  coarse  language, 
gross  habits,  or  vulgar  behaviour  in  my  fel- 
low mortal  than  by  all  his  errors  in  creed  or 
morals.  So  little  parts  men,  and  is  permitted 
to  part  them,  that  it  is  very  likely  that  some 
mere  awkwardness  of  behaviour  in  my  fellow 
man  may  extirpate  effectually  the  regard  I 
might  have  had  for  him.  How  little  indeed 
is  permitted  to  part  friends — often  nothing 
more  than  a  tone  of  voice,  a  word  misinter- 
preted, or  something  equally  slight,  the  prod- 
uct very  possibly  of  shyness,  or  inability  for 
right  expression  on  a  sudden  call.  And  there 
is  all  that  goes  by  the  name  of  antipathy,  the 


140         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

nameless  and  quite  irrational  repulsions 
which  we  permit  ourselves  to  cherish,  for 
which  we  have  no  better  excuse  than  that 
they  are  instinctive.  With  all  these  forces 
against  us  how  can  we  love  our  neighbour  as 
ourselves  ?  It  is  something  if  we  do  not  de- 
test him;  if  we  tolerate  him  it  should  be 
counted  to  us  for  a  virtue. 

Yet  the  method  by  which  we  may  love  him 
is  quite  simple  ;  it  is  to  approach  him  not  with 
judgment  but  compassion,  to  put  ourselves  in 
his  place,  to  see  his  life  from  his  point  of 
view  instead  of  our  own.  What  is  his  igno- 
rance after  all  but  lack  of  opportunity? 
What  are  his  bad  manners  but  the  penalty  of 
a  narrow  life  ?  What  are  these  habits  of  his 
which  so  offend  me  but  things  inevitable  in 
that  condition  of  servitude  which  he  occupies 
— a  servitude,  let  me  recollect,  which  minis- 
ters to  my  ease  and  comfort?  To-day,  not 
less  than  in  earlier  generations,  society  re- 
sembles the  palaces  of  the  Italian  Renaissance, 
— the  feast  of  life  in  the  painted  hall,  and  the 
groaning  of  the  prisoner  in  the  depths  below. 


THE  LAW  OF  COMPASSION     141 

For  every  comfort  that  I  have,  some  one  has 
sweated.  My  fire  is  lit  not  only  with  coal 
from  the  mine,  but  with  the  miners  flesh  and 
blood  ;  my  food  has  come  through  roaring 
seas  in  which  men  perished  by  hurricane  and 
shipwreck;  the  very  books  from  which  I 
draw  my  culture  are  the  product  not  alone  of 
the  scholar  and  the  thinker,  but  of  rude  un- 
lettered men  in  forest  and  at  forge  who 
helped  to  make  them  by  their  toil.  If  I  were 
as  educated  as  I  claim  to  be  I  should  know 
myself  debtor  to  the  barbarian  as  truly  as  to 
the  Greek,  and  as  I  read  my  book  I  should 
see  the  forest  falling  that  it  might  be  woven 
into  paper,  and  men  labouring  in  the  heat  of 
factories  that  the  moulded  metal  might  be- 
come the  organ  of  intelligence.  Nay,  I 
should  see  yet  more ;  for  would  it  not  appear 
that  these  nameless  toilers  are  richer  in  essen- 
tial life,  and  in  the  deep  knowledge  of  what 
man's  existence  is,  than  even  the  scholar  and 
the  writer,  whose  main  acquaintance  with  life 
is  with  words  rather  than  acts  ?  They  toil 
with  tense  muscles  through  the  summer  heat 


i42         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

and  winter  cold  ;  they  endure  hardship  and 
danger ;  and  week  by  week  their  scanty  wage 
is  shared  by  wives  and  children,  who  excite 
in  them  tenderness  and  self-sacrifice,  and  re- 
pay them  with  affection  and  devotion.  For 
it  is  so  decreed  that  the  sacred  magnanimi- 
ties of  the  human  heart  come  to  flower  as 
fully  in  lives  of  crude  labour  as  in  lives  of 
ease ;  these  roughened  hands  grow  gentle 
when  they  touch  the  heads  of  little  children, 
on  these  strong  breasts  the  wife  rests  her 
weariness,  and  these  lips  that  speak  a  lan- 
guage so  different  from  mine  have  neverthe- 
less known  the  sacramental  wine  of  love. 
Were  my  life  weighed  with  theirs  might  it 
not  appear  that  theirs  was  the  richer  in  es- 
sential fortitude,  in  patience  and  endurance, 
in-all  the  final  qualities  that  compose  the  finest 
manhood  ? 

The  spirit  of  compassion  interprets  these 
lives  to  me ;  it  lends  me  vision.  It  enables 
me  to  see  them  not  in  their  artificial  dis- 
parities, but  in  their  deep-lying  kinship  with 
mine  and  all   other  lives.     And   the  same 


THE  LAW  OF  COMPASSION     143 

thing  happens  when  I  survey  lives  stained 
with  folly,  wrecked  by  weakness,  or  made 
detestable  by  sin  and  crime.  I  also  have 
known  folly,  weakness,  sin  ;  but  for  me  there 
were  compulsions  to  a  virtuous  life  which 
these  never  knew.  Why  am  I  not  as  these  ? 
Perhaps  because  my  nature  rests  on  a  securer 
equipoise,  or  because  there  is  in  it  a  certain 
power  of  moral  recuperation  which  these 
have  lacked,  or  because  I  have  the  prudence 
that  stops  short  of  consummated  folly,  or  be- 
cause my  environment  imposes  and  creates 
restraint,  or  because  I  have  never  known  the 
peculiar  violence  of  temptation  before  which 
they  succumbed.  There  may  be  a  hundred 
reasons,  but  scarce  one  which  gives  me  cause 
for  boasting.  With  their  life  to  live,  had  I 
done  better  ?  Exposed  to  their  temptations, 
deprived  of  all  the  helpful  friendships  that 
have  interposed  between  my  life  and  ruin, 
should  I  have  done  as  well?  In  those  wake- 
ful hours  of  night  when  all  my  past  life  runs 
before  me  like  a  frieze  of  flame,  how  clearly 
do  I  see  how  frequently  I  grazed  the  snare, 


144         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

hung  over  gulfs  of  wild  disaster,  courted  ruin, 
and  escaped  I  know  not  how  ?  Remember- 
ing this,  can  I  be  hard  towards  those  who 
fell?  Can  I  pride  myself  on  an  escape  in 
which  my  will  had  little  part,  a  deliverance 
which  was  a  kind  of  miracle,  wrought  not  by 
virtue  or  discretion,  but  by  some  outside 
force  which  thrust  out  a  strong  and  willing 
hand  to  save  me?  And,  as  these  thoughts 
pursue  me,  I  find  myself  all  at  once  regard- 
ing these  wrecked  and  miserable  lives  not 
from  the  outside  but  the  inside.  I  penetrate 
their  inmost  coil  of  being,  and  see  with 
horror  the  crumbling  of  the  house  of  life — 
with  horror,  but  also  with  a  torturing  pity. 
And  then  because  compassion  lives  in  me,  I 
can  at  last  separate  between  the  sinner  and 
his  sin.  The  sin  remains  abhorrent,  but  I 
cannot  hate  the  sinner.  I  see  him  as  one 
who  has  fallen  in  a  bad  cause,  but  his  wounds 
cry  so  loud  for  pity  that  I  forget  the  moral 
treason  that  has  brought  him  to  a  battle-field 
so  ignominious  and  so  disastrous.  And  out 
of  the  pity  grows  love,  for  love  is  the  natural 


THE  LAW  OF  COMPASSION     145 

end  of  pity ;  and  the  magnanimity  of  love, 
overleaping  moral  values,  fixes  only  on  the 
fact  of  suffering  that  appeals  for  succour, 
misery  that  cries  for  help.  This  was  the 
vital  fact  that  Jesus  saw  when  He  had  com- 
passion on  the  multitude. 

Jesus  had  compassion  on  the  multitude, 
and  He  gives  the  reason ;  He  saw  them  as 
sheep  having  no  shepherd.  It  was  the  ele- 
ment of  misdirection  in  their  lives  on  which 
Jesus  fixed  His  glance — it  was  for  lack  of 
guidance  and  a  shepherd  they  had  gone 
astray.  May  not  the  same  be  said  of  all  the 
lives  that  fail,  whether  through  ignorance  or 
want,  folly  or  crime  ?  Rightly  guided  they 
might  have  attained  knowledge  and  esteem, 
wisdom  and  virtue ;  and  if  that  be  so,  no 
man  of  right  spirit  can  refuse  to  feel  the 
pathos  of  their  situation.  It  is  to  this  point 
that  Jesus  leads  us.  He  makes  us  conscious 
of  "the  still  sad  music  of  humanity."  No 
further  incentive  is  needed  to  make  us  love 
humanity  than  the  pathos  of  the  human  lot. 
A  man  may  be  a  knave,  a  fool,  a  rogue ;  yet 


i46         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

could  we  unravel  all  the  secrecies  of  his  dis- 
aster we  should  find  so  much  to  move  our 
pity,  so  much  in  his  life  which  resembles 
crises  in  our  own,  that  in  the  end  the  one 
vision  that  remains  with  us  is  of  a  wounded 
brother  man.  When  once  we  see  that  vision 
all  our  pride  of  virtue  dies  in  us,  and  quicker 
yet  to  die  is  the  temper  of  contempt  which 
we  have  nurtured  towards  those  whose  faults 
offend  us.  A  yet  greater  offense  is  ours  if 
we  can  behold  suffering,  however  caused, 
without  pity.  Worse  than  the  worst  crime 
which  man  can  commit  against  society,  or 
the  worst  personal  wrong  he  can  inflict  on 
us,  is  the  temper  in  ourselves  which  judges 
him  without  mercy,  and  refuses  him  the  one 
medicine  that  may  reinvigorate  him — the 
balm  of  pity  and  forgiveness.  And,  after  all,  of 
what  wrong  is  it  not  true  that  the  bitterest 
suffering  it  creates  falls  not  upon  the  wronged 
but  the  wronger,  so  that  in  the  end  the  sinner 
is  the  real  victim,  and  like  all  victims  should 
be  the  object  of  compassion  rather  than  of 
vengeance  ? 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  WAITED 

She  wrought  warm  garments  for  the  poor , 

From  morn  to  eve  unwearied  she 
Went  with  her  gifts  from  door  to  door  ; 

And  when  the  night  drew  silently 
Along  the  streets,  and  she  came  home, 
She  prayed,  "  O  Lord,  when  wilt  Thou  come  ?  " 

She  was  but  loving,  she  could  please 

With  no  rare  art  of  speech  or  song. 
The  art  she  knew  was  how  to  ease 

The  sick  manys  pain,  the  weak  man's  wrong  ; 
And  every  night  as  she  came  home 
She  said,  "  O  Lord,  when  wilt  Thou  come  ?  " 

The  truths  men  praised  she  deemed  untrue, 
The  light  they  hailed  to  her  was  dim ; 

But  that  the  Christ  was  kind  she  knew, 
She  knew  that  she  must  be  like  Him. 

Like  Mary,  in  her  darkened  home, 

She  sighed,  "O  Christ,  that  thou  would* st  come!1* 

Her  hair  grew  white,  her  house  was  bare, 
Yet  still  her  step  was  firm  and  glad ; 

The  feet  of  Hunger  climbed  the  stair, 
For  she  had  given  all  she  had. 

She  died  within  her  empty  home 

Still  seeking  One  who  did  not  come. 


She  rose  from  out  the  wave  of  death, 
A  Stranger  stood  beside  the  shore  ; 

The  robe  she  wrought  with  failing  breath, 
And  staining  tears,  the  Stranger  wore. 

He  drew  her  tired  heart  with  His  smile, 
"  Lo,  I  was  with  thee  all  the  while" 


XIII 
THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

BUT  if  this  spirit  of  compassion  were 
general,  would  virtue  itself  be  secure  ? 
Would  not  a  fatal  lenience  towards 
vice  become  the  temper  of  society  ?  Would 
not  the  immediate  effect  be  the  declaration  of 
a  general  amnesty  towards  every  kind  of 
wrong-doer,  and  from  such  an  act  what  could 
be  expected  but  a  rapid  dissolution  of  the 
laws  and  conventions  that  maintain  the  struc- 
ture of  society  ? 

These  are  natural  fears,  and  they  are  not 
altogether  the  fears  of  weak  and  timid  men. 
They  will  certainly  be  shared  by  all  tyrants, 
all  persons  whose  tempers  incline  to  absol- 
utism, all  believers  in  force  as  the  true 
dynamic  of  stable  social  government.  To 
reason  with  such  persons  is  impossible,  be- 
cause their  opinions  are  the  fruit  of  temper, 
and  are  therefore  irrational.  But  even  such 
persons  are  not  destitute  of  powers  of  ob- 
151 


152         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

servation,  and  in  the  long  history  of  the 
world  there  is  a  field  of  observation  which  no 
person  of  intelligence  can  neglect. 

Do  we  find,  as  we  survey  this  field,  that 
force  has  ever  proved  the  true  dynamic  of 
stable  social  government  ?  We  find  the  exact 
contrary  to  be  true.  The  great  empires  of 
the  past  were  founded  on  force  and  perished, 
even  as  Napoleon  discovered  in  his  final 
reveries  on  human  history.  Whenever  force 
has  been  applied  to  maintain  what  seemed  a 
right  social  system  it  has  uniformly  failed. 
The  Church  of  Rome  applied  force  to  pro- 
duce a  world  consonant  with  her  ideas  of 
truth ;  she  was  all  but  destroyed  by  the  re- 
coil of  her  prolonged  persecutions.  The 
Puritans  were  persecuted  in  the  name  of 
truth  and  virtue ;  they  triumphed.  The  Pu- 
ritans in  turn  persecuted,  under  the  impulse 
of  ideals  that  an  impartial  judgment  must 
pronounce  among  the  loftiest  and  noblest 
that  ever  animated  human  hearts,  and  in 
turn  they  were  overthrown.  Again  and  again, 
when  crime    has    attained    monstrous   and 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE         153 

threatening  proportions,  laws  of  barbarous 
severity  have  been  applied  for  its  repression; 
in  not  one  solitary  instance  have  they  been 
successful.  The  more  barbarous  and  severe 
the  law  against  crime,  the  more  has  crime 
flourished.  When  men  were  hanged  for  petty 
theft,  when  they  were  whipped  at  the  cart's  tail 
for  seditious  language,  when  they  were  disem- 
bowelled for  treasonable  practices ;  theft,  sedi- 
tion, and  treason  flourished  as  they  have  never 
flourished  since.  The  very  disproportion  and 
hideousness  of  the  penalty  inflamed  men's 
minds  to  the  commission  of  wrong.  On  the 
contrary,  the  birth  of  lenience  and  humanity 
was  immediately  rewarded  by  a  decline  of 
crime.  These  are  lessons  which  we  do  well 
to  recollect  to-day  when  statesmen  advocate 
the  death  penalty  for  the  anarchist,  irrespec- 
tive of  his  exact  crime;  when  city  councils 
propose  the  same  penalty  for  those  guilty  of 
outrages  on  women ;  when  indignant  mobs, 
in  spite  of  law,  and  without  trial,  burn  at  the 
stake  offending  negroes.  If  history  teaches 
anything  with  an  emphasis  at  once  clear  and 


154         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

unmistakable,  it  is  that  crime  has  never  yet 
been  abridged  by  brutal  harshness,  but  has 
thriven  on  it.  History  also  teaches  with  an 
emphasis  equally  clear  and  positive,  that  the 
spirit  of  love,  manifesting  itself  in  lenience, 
compassion,  and  magnanimity,  has  constantly 
justified  itself  by  the  reduction  of  crime,  and 
the  taming  of  the  worst  kind  of  criminal, 

Is  not  this  in  itself  a  justification  of  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  ?  Does  it  not  appear,  on  the 
review  of  nearly  two  thousand  years  of  his- 
tory, that  society  has  attained  its  greatest 
happiness  and  has  reached  its  highest  condi- 
tion of  virtue,  precisely  in  those  periods  when 
the  gentle  ideals  of  Jesus  have  had  most 
sway  over  human  thought  and  action  ?  And 
if  this  be  so,  is  it  possible  to  doubt  that  so- 
ciety will  only  continue  to  progress  towards 
happiness  and  content  in  the  degree  that  it 
obeys  the  counsels  of  Jesus,  making  not  force 
but  love  the  great  social  dynamic,  which  shall 
control  all  its  operations  and  guide  all  its 
judgments  ? 

It  may  appear  impossible  and  inexpedient 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE         155 

for  the  human  judge  to  say  to  the  offender, 
"  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee ;  go,  sin  no 
more  "  ;  but  it  is  very  clear  that  the  opposite 
course  does  by  no  means  lead  to  a  cessation 
of  sin.  For  what  is  the  total  result  of  all  our 
punishments  in  the  name  of  law  but  the  manu- 
facture of  criminals  ?  According  to  our  theory 
of  punishment  a  jail  should  be  a  seminary 
of  virtue  and  reformation.  Men  submitted 
to  its  discipline  should  come  out  new  crea- 
tures, cured  of  every  tendency  to  crime.  On 
the  contrary,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  they 
come  out  a  thousandfold  worse  than  they 
went  in.  If  this  is  not  the  case,  it  is  because 
some  Christian  influence,  not  included  in  our 
legal  system,  has  reached  them.  But  such 
influences  reach  very  few.  The  influences 
that  operate  in  the  great  majority  of  cases 
are  wholly  demoralizing.  Those  who  enter 
a  jail  with  genuine  intentions  of  reform 
speedily  discover  that  they  are  not  expected 
to  reform.  They  are  branded  indelibly.  They 
are  exposed  to  the  corruption  of  associates  a 
hundredfold  worse  than  themselves.     They 


156         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

leave  the  jail  with  every  avenue  of  honest 
industry  closed  to  them,  every  man's  hand 
against  them,  and  no  career  possible  to  them 
but  a  life  of  crime.  When  we  consider  these 
things  we  have  little  cause  to  congratulate 
ourselves  upon  the  results  of  our  systems  of 
justice.  Even  a  general  amnesty  towards 
every  form  of  crime  could  scarcely  produce 
results  more  deplorable.  Fantastic  as  it  may 
appear,  yet  it  seems  not  improbable  that  the 
abolition  of  the  jail  and  of  all  penal  law, 
might  produce  benefits  for  humanity  such  as 
centuries  of  punishment  on  crime  have  wholly 
failed  to  produce. 

But  no  one  asks  this  at  present,  though 
the  day  may  come  sooner  than  we  think, 
when  society,  tired  of  the  long  failure  and 
absolute  futility  of  all  its  attempts  to  cleanse 
the  world  of  crime  by  penal  enactments,  will 
make  this  demand.  It  is  enough  now  if  we 
press  the  question  whether  there  is  not  good 
ground  in  all  this  dreary  history  of  futility 
and  failure,  to  make  some  attempt  to  govern 
society  by  the  ideals  of  Jesus  ?    Why  should 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE         157 

not  the  Church  replace  the  jail?  Why- 
should  not  the  offender  be  handed  over  to  a 
company  of  Christian  people,  instead  of  a 
company  of  jailers,  paid  to  be  harsh,  and  by 
the  very  nature  of  their  occupation  trained 
to  harsh  tempers  and  cruel  acts  ?  Who  are 
better  fitted  for  the  custody  of  the  criminal 
than  people  whose  lives  are  based  on  the 
merciful  ideals  of  Jesus?  How  could  such 
persons  be  better  employed  than  in  devoting 
themselves  to  the  restoration  of  self-respect 
in  the  fallen,  than  in  the  attempt  to  nurture 
into  vigour  his  bruised  or  dormant  instincts 
of  right,  than  in  the  organized  effort  to  re- 
store him  to  some  place  in  society  which 
should  give  him  honest  bread  in  return  for 
honest  labour?  Few  men  are  criminals  by 
choice.  Crime  is  more  often  the  fruit  of 
weakness  than  intention.  Almost  every 
criminal  would  prefer  an  honourable  life  if 
he  knew  how  to  set  about  it.  Can  we  doubt 
that  if  Jesus  presided  in  the  councils  of  His 
Church  to-day,  this  would  be  one  of  the  first 
directions   in   which    He   would   apply    His 


158         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

energy  ?  And  who  that  surveys  the  modern 
Church  with  undeflected  judgment  would  not 
say  that  the  Church  would  be  a  thousand 
times  dearer  to  the  world,  a  thousand  times 
more  sacred,  respected,  and  authoritative,  if 
instead  of  spending  its  time  in  spiritual  self- 
gratification,  and  its  riches  in  the  adornment 
of  its  worship,  it  became  the  true  Hospice  of 
the  Fallen  and  Unfortunate,  thus  exemplifying 
in  its  action  that  love  for  men  which  was  the 
essential  spirit  of  its  Founder  ? 

It  will  no  doubt  be  replied  that  the  Church 
already,  by  a  thousand  institutions,  of  a  phil- 
anthropic character,  is  attempting  this  very 
work.  But  this  is  an  evasion  of  the  point, 
for  such  institutions  only  begin  their  work  of 
redemption  when  the  existing  social  systems 
have  accomplished  their  work  of  destruction. 
Moreover,  no  institution,  however  admirable, 
can  be  a  substitute  for  the  general  action  of 
the  Church.  It  is  precisely  this  practice  of 
substitution  that  accounts  for  so  much  of  the 
weakness  of  the  Church.  It  is  so  much  more 
easy  and  pleasant  to  devolve  upon   others 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE         159 

duties  which  to  us  are  disagreeable,  to  buy 
ourselves  out  of  the  conscription  of  personal 
duty,  to  persuade  ourselves  that  we  have 
done  all  that  can  be  asked  of  us  when  we 
have  given  money  for  some  worthy  end,  that 
it  is  not  surprising  that  multitudes  of  excel- 
lent and  kindly  people  adopt  such  views  and 
practices.  But,  in  doing  so,  they  miss  not 
only  the  joy  of  personal  well-doing,  but  also 
the  sense  of  reality  in  the  good  that  is  done. 
And  the  spectator  and  critic  of  the  life  of  the 
Church,  although  he  may  not  be  ignorant  of 
the  kind  of  work  done  by  these  institutions, 
nevertheless  is  keenly  conscious  of  the  lack 
of  reality  in  the  work  of  the  Church,  when  he 
finds  that  its  individual  members  are  leading 
lives  in  no  way  distinguishable  by  any  active 
love  for  their  fellows.  For  the  main  reason 
why  thoughtful  men  manifest  aversion  to  the 
Church  is  not  found  in  dislike  for  her  wor- 
ship, or  rejection  of  her  creeds  ;  it  is  found 
rather  in  the  sense  of  unreality  in  her  life. 
Who,  such  men  will  ask,  among  all  this  mul- 
titude of  well-dressed  worshippers,  offering 


160         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

their  adoration  to  the  Deity,  visits  the  father- 
less and  widow  in  their  affliction,  lays  re- 
straining hands  upon  the  tempted,  uplifts  the 
fallen  or  instructs  the  depraved,  and  so  ful- 
fills the  true  ideal  of  religion  pure  and  unde- 
nted ?  What  is  the  exact  nature  of  their  im- 
pact upon  society  ?  Are  they  more  merci- 
ful, more  compassionate,  more  sympathetic 
than  average  mankind  ?  Do  they  not  share 
the  same  social  prejudices,  and  guide  their 
lives  by  the  same  social  traditions  as 
the  bulk  of  men  and  women?  And  if 
nothing  more  than  this  can  be  predicated  of 
them,  how  is  it  possible  to  avoid  that  impres- 
sion of  essential  unreality  which  is  inseparable 
from  the  subscription  to  social  ideals  infinitely 
loftier  and  purer  than  any  others  in  human 
history,  united  with  lives  which  in  no  way 
rise  above  the  average?  Here  is  the  true 
reason  why  thoughtful  men  think  lightly,  and 
even  scornfully  of  the  Church.  It  is  not  the 
truths  and  ideals  of  Jesus  that  offend  them, 
but  the  travesty  of  those  truths  and  ideals  in 
the  average  life  of  Christians. 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE         161 

But  whenever  any  man  attempts  to  live  in 
the  spirit  of  Jesus,  the  first  to  rally  to  him  are 
the  sincere  recusants  from  the  church.  He 
may  be  satirised,  and  probably  will  be,  as  a 
moral  anarchist,  a  fanatic,  and  a  hare-brained 
enthusiast ;  but  nevertheless  the  best  men  will 
rally  to  him.  They  rallied  to  a  Father  Doll- 
ing, they  rally  to  a  General  Booth.  The 
types  represented  by  such  men  lie  far  apart. 
One  was  so  high  a  ritualist  as  to  be  almost 
Catholic,  the  other  is  an  ecclesiastic  anarchist 
so  extreme  that  he  dispenses  with  the  sacra- 
ments. But  these  things  count  for  little  ; 
what  the  world  sees  in  such  men  is  the  es- 
sential reality  of  their  life.  One  of  the  sever- 
est critics  of  Dolling  once  went  to  hear  him 
with  the  bitterest  prejudice.  He  found  him 
with  a  couple  of  hundred  thieves  and  prosti- 
tutes gathered  round  him,  to  whom  he  was 
telling  the  love  of  Jesus  in  the  simplest  lan- 
guage. "  Dolling  may  be  a  Roman  Catho- 
lic, or  anything  else  he  pleases,"  said  his 
critic ;  "  all  I  know  is  that  I  never  heard  any 
one  speak  of  Christ  like  that,"  and  from  that 


162         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

hour  he  was  his  warmest  friend.  No  doubt 
similar  conversions  of  sentiment  have  at- 
tended the  ministries  of  all  apostolic  men  and 
women,  of  Francis  and  Catherine,  of  Wesley 
and  Whitfield,  of  Moody  and  General  Booth. 
Men  know  by  instinct  the  lover  of  his  kind. 
Men  forgive  a  hundred  defects  for  the  sake  of 
reality.  Perhaps  the  sublimest  of  all  justifi- 
cations of  Christ's  law  of  love  is  that  no  man 
has  truly  practiced  it  in  any  age  without  him- 
self rising  into  a  life  of  memorable  signifi- 
cance, without  immediate  attestations  of  its 
virtue  in  the  transformation  of  society,  with- 
out attracting  to  himself  the  reverence  and  af- 
fection of  multitudes  of  fellow  workers  who 
have  rendered  him  the  same  adoring  disciple- 
ship  that  the  friends  of  Jesus  gave  to  Him. 

No  doubt  it  will  also  be  said  that  were  the 
ideals  thus  indicated  to  triumph,  there  would 
be  nothing  left  for  the  direction  of  society  but 
a  mischievous  and  sentimental  spirit  of 
amiability.  The  general  fibre  of  virtue  would 
disintegrate.  Pity  for  the  sinner,  pushed  to 
such  extremes,  would  in  the  end  mean  toler- 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE         163 

ance  for  sin.  But  to  such  an  objection  the 
character  of  Jesus  furnishes  its  own  reply. 
The  character  of  Jesus  displays  love  in  its 
supreme  type,  but  it  is  wholly  lacking  in  that 
weak-featured  travesty  of  love  which  we  call 
amiability.  His  hatred  of  sin  was  at  times  a 
furious  rage.  His  lips  breathed  flame  as  well 
as  tenderness ;  "  Out  of  His  mouth  proceeded 
a  sharp  two-edged  sword."  We  may  search 
literature  in  vain  to  discover  any  words  half 
as  terrible  and  scathing  as  the  words  in  which 
Jesus  described  sin.  The  psychological  ex- 
planation is  that  great  powers  of  love 
are  twin  with  great  powers  of  hatred. 
The  passionate  love  of  virtue  is,  in  its  ob- 
verse, an  equally  passionate  hatred  of  vice. 
In  the  same  way  the  passionate  love  of  our 
kind  has  for  its  obverse  an  equally  passionate 
hatred  for  the  wrongs  they  endure.  For  this 
reason  justice  and  virtue  are  nowhere  so  se- 
cure as  in  the  hands  of  men  who  love  their 
kind  intensely.  They  are  most  insecure  in  the 
hands  of  the  cynic,  who  despises  his  kind, 
and  therefore  misapprehends  their  conduct. 


164         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

For  love,  in  its  last  analysis,  is  under- 
standing, and  where  there  is  understanding  of 
our  fellows  there  can  hardly  fail  to  be  wisdom 
in  our  method  of  treating  them.  That  was 
the  great  secret  of  Jesus  in  these  examples 
which  we  have  reviewed.  He  understood 
Simon  Peter.  He  understood  the  woman 
who  was  a  sinner.  He  therefore  knew  the 
only  wise  method  of  treating  them.  One 
with  less  pity  might  have  sent  the  harlot 
back  to  her  shame,  one  with  less  love  might 
have  driven  Peter  into  permanent  apostasy. 
But  Jesus,  in  His  understanding  of  the  human 
heart,  knew  the  exact  limit  of  reproof,  the 
exact  point  at  which  magnanimity  became 
efficacious  in  redemption.  Those  who  follow 
His  spirit  will  attain  the  same  rare  wisdom. 
They  will  never  sacrifice  virtue  to  compas- 
sion, nor  will  they  put  virtue  in  opposition  to 
compassion.  One  question  may  suffice. 
Would  we  be  content  to  leave  the  adminis- 
tration of  society  in  the  hands  of  Jesus? 
Would  we  confidently  submit  our  own  case 
to  His  jurisdiction  ?    If,  in  every  dispute  be- 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE         165 

tween  men  and  nations,  in  every  case  of 
wrong  and  crime,  Jesus  were  the  one  Arbiter, 
would  the  world  be  better  ruled,  would  the 
probable  course  of  events  be  such  as  to  in- 
crease the  sum  of  human  happiness?  We 
can  scarcely  hesitate  in  the  reply — we,  who 
daily  pray  that  His  kingdom  may  come. 
And  if  to  such  questions  we  return  our  in- 
evitable affirmative,  we  cannot  doubt  that 
society  has  everything  to  gain  in  being 
governed  by  those  who  live  most  closely  in 
the  spirit  of  Jesus ;  that  they,  and  they  only, 
are  the  true  leaders  and  judges  of  the 
nations. 


THE  BUILDERS  OF  THE 
EMPIRE 


THE  PRATER 

Lover  of  souls,  indeed. 

But  Lover  of  bodies  too, 
Seeing  in  human  flesh 

The  God  shine  through  ,• 
Hallowed  be  Thy  name, 

And,  for  the  sake  of  Thee, 
Hallowed  be  all  men, 

For  Thine  they  be. 

Doer  of  deeds  divine, 

Thou,  the  Father's  Son, 
In  all  Thy  children  may 

Thy  will  be  done, 
Till  each  works  miracles 

On  poor  and  sick  and  blind, 
Learning  from  Thee  the  art 

Of  being  kind. 

For  Thine  is  the  glory  of  love, 

And  Thine  the  tender  power, 
Touching  the  barren  heart 

To  leaf  and  flower, 
Till  not  the  lilies  alone, 

Beneath  Thy  gentle  feet, 
But  human  lives  for  Thee 

Grow  white  and  sweet. 


And  Thine  shall  the  Kingdom  be. 

Thou  Lord  of  Love  and  Pain, 
Conqueror  over  death 

By  being  slain. 
And  we,  with  the  lives  like  Thine 

Shall  cry  in  the  great  day  when 
Thou  contest  to  claim  Thine  own, 

"All  Hail!     Amen." 


XIV 

THE  BUILDERS  OF  THE  EMPIRE 

IT  may  be  long  before  the  world  recog- 
nizes this  leadership  of  the  loving,  and 
accepts  their  judgment,  but  nevertheless 
the  world  is  debtor  to  them  for  all  that  sweet- 
ens life,  and  makes  society  tolerable.  Such 
men  and  women  move  unrecognized,  doing 
their  kindly  work  without  praise,  and  not  so 
much  as  asking  praise  from  men ;  but  theirs 
is  a  securer  triumph  than  earth  can  give,  and 
on  their  brows  rests  a  rarer  crown  than  earthly 
monarchs  wear.  I  know  many  of  these  men 
and  women,  and  I  never  meet  them  without 
the  sense  that  the  seamless  robe  of  Christ  has 
touched  me.  I  meet  them  in  unlikely  places  ; 
I  overtake  them  on  the  road  of  life,  oftenest 
in  the  places  where  the  shadows  lie  most 
thickly ;  but  on  each  brow  is  the  white  stone 
which  is  the  sign  of  peace,  and  in  each  voice 

is  that  deep  note  of  harmony  that  belongs 
171 


172         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

alone  to  those  who  walk  through  tribulations 
which  they  overcome,  griefs  of  which  they 
know  the  meaning,  sorrows  which  they  have 
the  skill  to  heal.  Their  very  footsteps  move 
more  evenly  than  other  men's,  as  though 
guided  by  the  rhythm  of  a  music  others  do 
not  hear;  their  very  hands  have  a  softness 
only  known  to  hands  that  bind  up  wounds 
and  wipe  men's  tears  away ;  and  in  all  their 
movements  and  their  aspect  is  a  stillness  and 
a  sweet  composure,  as  of  hearts  at  rest 
Whence  are  these,  and  why  are  they  arrayed 
in  white  robes  ?  And  we  know  the  answer, 
though  no  angel- voice  may  speak  to  us ;  these 
are  they  on  whose  bowed  heads  the  starlight 
of  Gethsemane  has  fallen,  in  whose  hands  are 
the  wounds  of  service,  in  whose  breasts  is  the 
heart  that  breaks  with  love  for  men. 

One  such  man  I  met  some  months  ago, 
fresh  from  the  forests  of  Wisconsin.  Through 
a  long  spring  day  he  told  me  his  story,  or 
rather  let  me  draw  it  from  him  episode  by 
episode,  for  he  was  much  too  modest  to  sup- 
pose anything  that  he  had  done  remarkable. 


BUILDERS  OF  THE  EMPIRE    173 

After  wild  and  careless  years  of  wasted  youth, 
Christ  had  found  him,  and  from  the  day  of 
his  regeneration  he  gave  himself  to  the  re- 
demption of  his  fellow  men.  He  became  a 
"  lumber-jack/'  a  preacher  to  the  rough  sons 
of  the  Wisconsin  forests.  He  told  me  how 
he  first  won  their  respect  by  sharing  their 
toil — he,  a  fragile  slip  of  a  man,  and  they 
giants  in  thew  and  muscle :  how  by  tact  and 
kindness  he  got  a  hearing  for  his  Master ; 
how  he  travelled  scores  of  miles  through  the 
winter  snows  to  nurse  dying  men,  wrecked 
by  wild  excesses  ;  how  he  had  sat  for  hours 
together  with  the  heads  of  drunken  men,  on 
whom  the  terror  had  fallen,  resting  on  his 
knees,  performing  for  them  offices  of  help 
which  no  other  would  attempt ;  how  he  had 
heard  the  confessions  of  thieves  and  mur- 
derers, who  had  fled  from  justice  to  the  ref- 
uge of  the  forest ;  how  he  had  stood  pale,  and 
apprehensive  of  violence  in  an  angry  drunken 
mob,  and  had  quelled  their  rage  by  singing 
to  them  "  Anywhere  with  Jesus  "  ;  how,  finally, 
he  had  fallen  ill,  and  had  hoped  in  his  ex- 


174         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

treme  weariness  for  the  great  release,  but  had 
come  back  from  the  gates  of  death  with  a 
new  hope  for  the  success  of  his  work ;  and  as 
he  spoke,  that  light  which  fell  upon  the  face 
of  the  dying  Stephen  rested  also  on  his  face ; 
for  he  also  saw,  and  made  me  see,  the  heav- 
ens opened,  and  Jesus  standing  at  the  right 
hand  of  the  throne  of  God.  He  was  only  a 
lumber- jack,  but  to  these  men  he  was  a 
Christ.  He  was  poor,  so  poor,  that  I  mar- 
velled how  he  lived  ;  but  he  had  adopted  into 
his  home  the  forsaken  child  of  a  drunken 
lumberman,  whose  wife  was  dead.  His  life 
was  full  of  hardship,  but  never  have  I  met  a 
happier  man.  For  he  had  found  the  one 
secret  of  all  noble  and  tranquil  living,  the  life 
of  service  ;  and  as  I  grasped  his  hand  at  part- 
ing and  remembered  how  often  it  had  rested 
in  healing  sympathy  upon  the  evil  and  the 
weary,  I  thought  of  the  words  of  the  blessed 
Master,  "  He  laid  His  hands  upon  her,  and 
the  fever  left  her,  and  she  rose  and  ministered 
unto  Him." 

Another  man  of  the  same  order  I   have 


BUILDERS  OF  THE  EMPIRE    175 

talked  with  as  these  concluding  lines  were 
written.  He  had  begun  life  with  brilliant 
prospects  as  a  lawyer,  had  been  wrecked  by 
drink,  and  one  night  while  drunk  had  fallen 
overboard  into  deep  water,  and  had  with 
difficulty  been  brought  back  to  life.  From 
that  hour  his  life  was  changed.  He  went  to 
a  Western  city  and  became  a  missionary  to 
drunkards  and  harlots.  He  told  me  of  a 
youth  of  nineteen  he  had  recently  visited  in 
prison.  The  youth  was  a  murderer,  and  the 
woman  he  had  loved  had  committed  suicide. 
He  was  utterly  impervious  to  reproof,  did  not 
want  to  live,  and  said  that  if  his  mistress  had 
gone  to  hell  he  wanted  to  go  there  too,  for 
she  was  the  only  human  creature  who  had 
ever  loved  him.  "  God  loves  you,"  said  my 
friend ;  "  yes,  and  I  love  you  too.  I  know 
how  you  feel.  You  want  just  to  be  loved. 
Come,  my  poor  boy,  let  me  love  you."  And 
at  that  appeal  this  youth,  with  triple  murder 
on  his  conscience,  melted,  and  flung  his  arms 
round  the  neck  of  his  visitor,  and  sobbed  out 
all  the  story  of  his  sin  and  shame,     O  ex- 


176         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

quisite  moment  when  the  heart  melts  at  the 
touch  of  love — could  all  the  heaped-up  gains 
of  a  life  of  pleasure  or  ambition  yield  such 
felicity  as  this  ?  For  this  man's  face,  rough 
and  plain  as  it  was,  glowed  as  he  spoke  with 
the  same  light  that  beatified  the  features  of 
my  friend  the  lumber-jack — "  the  Lord  God 
gave  them  light,"  and  the  Lamb  upon  the 
throne  was  the  light  of  all  their  seeing. 

A  little  while  ago  to  this  man  came  the  offer 
of  restoration  to  the  social  place  which  he  has 
lost.  He  might  have  gone  back  to  his  for- 
feited career,  with  an  ample  income.  He  put 
the  case  to  his  wife  and  to  his  boys  ;  with  in- 
stant unanimity  they  said,  "  Never ;  this  work 
is  the  best  work  in  the  world."  And  so  the 
once  brilliant  lawyer  is  happy  on  a  pittance, 
happier  than  he  ever  could  be  on  a  fortune, 
because  he  is  doing  Christ's  work  of  love 
among  his  fellow  men.  And  these  instances 
are  typical.  In  every  corner  of  the  world  are 
those  who  belong  to  the  true  Society  of  Jesus 
— the  Order  of  Love  and  Service, — and  the 
happiest  lives  lived  on  earth  are  lived  by 


BUILDERS  OF  THE  EMPIRE    177 

these  men  and  women.  For  Jesus  will  not 
suffer  any  man  to  be  the  loser  by  Him ;  He 
overpays  those  who  truly  follow  Him  with  a 
happiness  that  worlds  could  not  buy ;  and 
"  even  in  the  present  time,"  so  enriches  with 
the  love  of  others  those  who  love,  that  they 
are  unconscious  of  any  deprivation  in  their 
lot,  knowing  in  all  things,  amid  poverty,  in- 
sult, violence,  hardship  and  pain,  that  their 
gain  exceeds  their  loss  by  measureless  in- 
finitudes of  joy. 

We  may  be  neither  wise  nor  great,  but  we 
may  be  loving,  and  he  who  loves  is  already 
"  born  of  God,  and  knoweth  God,  for  God  is 
love."  We  may  have  but  a  poor  under- 
standing of  conflicting  theologies  and  philos- 
ophies, and  may  even  find  our  minds  hostile 
to  accepted  creeds ;  but  we  can  live  lives  of 
pitiful  and  serviceable  love.  He  who  does 
these  things  is  the  true  Christian  and  no 
other  is.  Against  the  man  who  loves  his 
fellows  Heaven  cannot  close  its  doors,  for  He 
who  reigns  in  Heaven  is  the  Lover  of  men, 
and  the   greatest  Lover  of  them  all.     We 


ij8         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

know  now  why  He  is  loved  as  no  other  has 
been  loved.  We  know  now  what  His  re- 
ligion truly  is ;  it  is  the  religion  of  Love.  To 
accept  this  religion  requires  in  us  but  one 
quality,  the  heart  of  the  little  child  which  re- 
tains the  freshness  and  obeys  the  authority  of 
the  emotions  ;  but  unless  we  become  as  little 
children  we  cannot  enter  this  kingdom.  This 
is  the  condition  of  entrance,  and  the  method 
is  equally  simple.  It  is  to  follow  Jesus  in  all 
our  acts  and  thoughts,  to  allow  no  temper 
that  we  do  not  find  in  Him,  to  build  our  lives 
upon  His  ideals  of  love  and  justice,  remem- 
bering always  that  He  is  more  than  the 
Truth, — He  is  the  Way  in  which  men  may 
confidently  tread,  and  the  Life  which  they 
may  share. 

All  things  in  the  intellectual  and  social  life 
of  men  move,  as  by  a  fixed  law,  towards 
simplification.  May  we  not  hope  that  this 
same  tendency  may  permeate  the  universal 
Church  of  Christ,  dissolving  the  accretions 
of  mistaken  and  conventional  piety,  combin- 
ing the  vital  elements  into  a  new  synthesis, 


BUILDERS  OF  THE  EMPIRE    179 

at  once  simple  and  convincing, — the  new 
which  is  the  oldest  and  the  earliest, — that  the 
Church  is  the  organ  of  the  Divine  Love, 
and  that  love  alone  is  the  Christian  equiv- 
alent of  religion  ? 

May  we  not  even  anticipate  that  the  visible 
decay  of  many  symbols  that  once  were  au- 
thoritative, of  many  forms  of  creed  that  are 
now  barely  tolerated  rather  than  respected, 
may  work  towards  this  issue  ;  that  gradually 
the  test  of  service  will  supplant  the  test  of  in- 
tellectual belief,  and  that  a  new  Church  will 
arise  founded  not  on  creed  at  all,  but  on  a 
real  imitation  of  the  life  of  Jesus?  If  this 
should  happen  we  need  not  regret  the  dis- 
solution of  the  forms  of  religious  life  which 
is  so  evident  to-day,  for  though  the  older 
kingdom  be  shaken,  we  shall  arrive  in  God's 
time  at  the  better  kingdom  which  cannot  be 
shaken. 

When  the  Church  does  manifestly  become 
the  organ  of  the  Divine  Love,  visibly  creating 
a  type  of  loving  and  lovable  men  and  women 
found  nowhere  else,  whose  lives  are  as  lamps 


180         THE  EMPIRE  OF  LOVE 

borne  before  the  feet  of  the  weary  and  the 
lost,  then  the  world,  now  hostile  or  indifferent 
to  the  Church,  will  love  the  Church  even  as 
by  instinct  it  loves  the  Christ.  Such  lives 
have  been  lived,  and  they  are,  even  to  those 
who  have  the  least  instinct  for  religion,  the 
most  sacred  memories  of  history,  and  the 
most  inspiring.  Such  lives  may  still  be  lived 
by  all  who  love  the  Lord  Christ  Jesus  in 
sincerity. 


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